Resonance

Tag: new year

  • New Year, Old Me: Do You Still Need to Make Resolutions?

    Everything is subject to diminishing returns under the sun. If you keep making New Year Resolutions and your lifestyle reset to default after only a few weeks, it only makes sense that you’ll get tired of making such Resolutions. The motivation with which people made Resolutions have died down in recent times. Now, basically, everyone is in the “I’m just there”, “let’s see what happens” mood.

    We all know there’s very little difference between the last day of the previous year and the first day of the current year. In other words, if you were in debt, were broke or stupid, you probably still are. Nothing has really changed in your situation. The only major difference is that the majority of the world has agreed that it is a new year. The fizzles of new year Resolutions die as the year goes by, and our behaviour resets to “factory settings”.

    Some even say that there’s nothing new about this year. Nothing shows that anything has changed. We all decided that today is the new year. That’s all! Some people even use a different calendar and to them, it may not be a new year. An example is the Chinese, whose New Year will fall on February 1st.

    Tapping Into The New Year Energy ✨

    Is there a need for Resolutions at all?

    Of course, there is. “You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago”, Alan Watts said.

    However, many miss an important step preceding resolutions: evaluations. At the end of every year, every institution holds an end-of-year meeting to calculate their profits. They evaluate their actions and decisions to determine what they did right – so they continue – and what they did wrong – so they re-strategize.

    Let’s all pretend like it’s just a new year like we already are. It is necessary that you self-evaluate. The days go by too fast for daily self-evaluation. After every month, however, self-evaluation will let you know if you are on track with your life goals or not. The year evaluation serves as a bigger picture to see the results of your minute actions and inactions. After the evaluation, re-solutions are made to make the most of the current year. So it’s rather systematic, not built on feelings of motivation and hyper-energy.

    new year resolutions - if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there

    If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. If you don’t define what success in life means to you and how it will look like, you wouldn’t have a yardstick to determine how whether you’re on the right path or not. It’s easy to know how far you’ve come because it’s all in the past. And oh!, how well we know our past. It’s the future we are all uncertain of.

    As you have already heard time and again, the best way to predict the future is to create it. Evaluate your life. Know where you want to go. Re-evaluate your life with time to know if you are on the right track or not. Make Resolutions to keep doing what is right and quit doing what is wrong. This is the purpose of Resolutions.

    Why You Need to Rejuvenate and not Restart in 2024

    Small Steps Everyday

    Understand where Resolutions are in the equation, and it will be simple for you to make them and keep them. “What if I fail like I did last year and the year before that, and the year before the year before that?”. If there was no failure, there wouldn’t be any need for Resolutions. Know this and know peace. So when you fail, don’t restart. Continue!

    Just as we “pretended” that today is a new day of a new year, you can pretend that each day is special to you. You have each day you awake to resolve the pitfalls in your life. Each day is a new year to do good, be good and live good. Remember, it is the individual trees that come together to form the forest. It is the little drops of water that make a mighty ocean.

    small steps every day - resolutions

  • Why You Need to Rejuvenate and not Restart in 2026

    Can you imagine an athlete in the middle of a 200-metre race not sprinting as good as she wanted, thereby deciding to restart? That’s what we do all the time. Restart whenever something goes wrong. As if everything is supposed to be perfect. As if nothing could possibly go wrong. As if failure is not part of the journey. There is a difference between restarting from scratch and restarting from experience. You’re restarting from scratch if you keep making the same mistakes. You’re restarting from experience if you keep making new mistakes.

    The Illusion of Restarting

    The truth is, restarting is really an illusion. We’ve just decided in our minds that we are restarting when you and I know that we cannot rewind life. Life is like an online video game. You can’t pause it. As you throw all previous progress out the window and start afresh for the 1000th time, know that time itself never started afresh. It simply kept moving as you while it away.

    Perhaps, that’s what we ought to do. Keep moving no matter what. Always remember this; there is more progress sticking to something worthwhile – not matter how long it takes – than hopping from one thing to another, starting from scratch every time. Try the same core idea from different angles, approaches and procedures. It’s better to try one thing 1000 times than try different things 1000 times. Persistence is key, so stick to one core idea.

    You Don’t Need To Figure It All Out

    The good news is that you don’t need to figure it all out before you start. The Western world popularizes the idea of figuring it all out right before you start. They tell you to write down your goals for the year and have a detailed plan on how you’ll achieve it. Thus, people write to the utmost detail what they will be doing each day for the entire year. That is too rigid, my dear.

    Looking back over the year, we don’t even remember into detail what happened each day. If our past is that blurry, how much more the future? See! Live one day at a time. It’s the days that add up to make a year. Don’t count the days; make the days count.

    Don’t Restart; Rejuvenate

    The reason why we keep restarting is not just because we want it to be perfect till the end. It’s because there’s a rush of enthusiasm whenever we start something. Restarting gives us fresh energy, vitality and optimism. Subject to the law of diminishing returns, the energy from the beginning slowly fizzles out till we are back where we last stumbled.

    As a matter of fact, it is easy to get addicted to the idea of restarting. Feeling too cluttered? Let’s clear everything and restart. Why not simply organize them and continue? Stuck in old bad habits? Let’s clear everything and restart. Why not consciously create new good habits and move on with life? If you need a new zeal and ambition, don’t restart. Rejuvenate. You gain new strength to overcome the situation you’re in at the moment. Rather than running away from it by restarting.

    So instead of quitting the marathon only to start over again, why not face your insecurities? For some of us, this is the message we ought to hear. You don’t need to wait for another year to put your life together. Don’t quit, yes. But quit restarting if you really want to make it to the finish line. Perhaps, it is by quitting this restart that you’ll break your cycle of failure and face your real underlying problems and weaknesses.

    I love you ❤️

  • Last Weekend of the Decade

    Last Weekend of the Decade

    It’s the last weekend, not only of the year, but of the decade. Can you believe that? The 2010s has been a bitter sweet journey for me, and certainly a love-hate relationship for many.

    T’was so confusing most of the time when it came to the concept of time ironically, especially for those born in the 1990s who have lived in two centuries and three decades and aren’t even 30 yet. To us, the year 2000 was 20 years ago and 1980 also seem like 20 years ago lmao. Would you believe it if I told you 2007 was 12 years ago?

    Hopefully, this new decade will re-orient our concept of time.

    The decade saw massive improvements in technology, creativity, global communication and networking, healthcare and whatnots. Homicide rates have fallen, more people are educated, the fight for equality has made more impact, maternal mortality rates have declined, even access to the internet has increased over the past decade.

    Is the world getting better or worse? Well, the world is getting better and worse. It also revealed an ugly truth we don’t want to admit; the fact that certain things we’d thought would be eradicated by now still exists in our midst; extreme poverty, extreme hunger, white supremacy, racism, climate change, dictatorship, “religious extremism” and the likes.

    The decade also saw the death of impactful world changers and the rise of many others. It doesn’t take much to make a difference in our world today. More people have a voice, a platform, a say. Hopefully, the next decade comes with its own exciting journey into challenging our boundaries of what’s possible and what’s not.

    Why don’t you share with me what you think the highlights of the decade were. I’d also like to know your expectations for the coming year and decade.

    I love you ❤️

  • Tapping Into The New Year Energy ✨

    Tapping Into The New Year Energy ✨

    It is yet another new year of our lives and aren’t we so grateful? The new year always starts with a pure type of energy of hope and serenity where we think anything is possible, every goal is achievable, every wrong is forgivable and every moment of our past is far out of reach. Over the years, we get caught up in the enthusiasm and make resolutions that are basically baseless solutions. When this occurs over a considerable number of years, we tend to walk into the new year with a kind of indifference that scoffs at the whole idea of making resolutions.
    The fact that you failed in your business approach doesn’t mean the whole business thingy is useless. The fact that you suck at fishing doesn’t mean those who fish are wasting their time. The fact that you made resolutions in the past that changed nothing doesn’t mean resolutions change nothing. You simply need to change your approach rather than decimate the whole idea.

    The questions we need to ask ourselves are,

    • how are we going to be consistent?
    • how are we going to keep that same energy till the end of the year?
    • how are we going to actually do what we know we should do?

    1. Clear Objectives

    More often than not, we focus on the struggle rather than the objective. If you want to go the gym, what is your objective? The vaguer your objectives, the more likely you are to fall along the line. When you ask people what they want to do this year, they say basically the same things from the past 4 or more years; get closer to God, pray more, exercise more, eat well, save more money, get organized, live life to the fullest etc. These are extremely vague. After you have identified these vague objectives, clarify them the more by asking two simple questions; why? and how?

    Save more money.

    Why? I want to purchase a new LG phone. (amount = 750-1000 Ghana cedis)

    How? Save 100 cedis for 10 months.

               Save 25 cedis each week.

               Save 4 cedis a day

    Once the objective is clear and explicit, accountability is possible. Once you don’t know what the end result must look like, you wouldn’t be able to track your progress properly. If you don’t know where your destination is, you’d never know how far you are from there.

    2. Accountability

    In order to be consistent, we need to be disciplined. In order to be disciplined, we need to be accountable. Of course, we all know that it takes discipline, but we struggle with discipline all year long because of, perhaps, this one missing ingredient; accountability. Want to save more money? Then you should be able to review how much you spent every month. Once you keep a gradual track of your progress, you find new momentum to continue. If you first of all know how much you spend, then you can choose to either compromise your expenses or earn more. Once you have a goal, you need to have a plan.

    See! Everybody wants to save money, even the richest man in the world. There are several ways of saving money. Find out which one best fits your situation and break it down to an everyday lifestyle. Once you know you have to save 4 cedis today, you can at least make it a point to. There are times when you’d fail, no doubt. But at least, you’re well aware of it. There’s nothing worse than failing and not being aware because there’s no accountability. There is a need to review your life on the daily. Every day is a new day to be better than yesterday. But remember that it’s only possible with accountability. It is highly recommended that you have a friend or partner who holds you accountable for your actions.

    3. Time Allocation

    One factor that is most essential determines whether something is achievable or not is TIME. Everything is possible, but some things become impossible when time is not on our side. In other words, what makes the impossible possible is time. Time is the x factor. Everything is possible with time. Therefore, your time allocation will determine whether your set goal is achievable or not.

    Once you get the time factor wrong, your set goals become unrealistic. On the other hand, where there is no time allocation – what you’d do every day, every 2 weeks, every month etc – the goal becomes “immortal” and is never achieved. Even with goals concerning behaviours which must last a lifetime, time allocation is very essential;

    Want to spend more time with your spouse?

    Why? To have a more intimate relationship and communicate better as a couple.

    How? Go on a trip to resorts in the locality.

    Time allocation: Every last weekend of the month.

    Progress takes a long time to materialise suddenly. Realise that you’d need more time than you think you would. Even in matters of faith. At the end of the day, it wouldn’t be able about how long it took, it would be about how long it lasts. Take your time and establish something concrete that will stand the test of time rather than riding on the illusion of progress in taking less time and seeing everything fall into shambles later. Choose deeper roots first; taller trees will follow.


    I love you ❤