Breaking resolutions

Some slack then on your supposedly robust but stressful resolutions is the key to successfully fulfilling resolutions.

Still, I hope you aren't sorry about paying riotous compliments "both to the old year that has rolled away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, and the new one in, with gaiety and glee."

As humane George Orwell once wrote on committing excesses during a once-a-year outbreak such as New Year's Eve: "One may decide, with full knowledge of what one is doing, that an occasional good time is worth the damage it inflicts on one's liver. For health is not the only thing that matters: Friendship, hospitality, and the heightened spirits and change of outlook that one gets by eating and drinking in good company are also valuable… The whole experience, including the repentance afterwards, makes a sort of break in one's mental routine, comparable to a weekend in a foreign country, which is probably beneficial."

But, as you now reflect in cheerful recollection of last night's revelries as well as giving heartfelt thankfulness to other cheery occurrences in the past year, one should also justly credit the confidence the New Year brings.

Until, of course, the year proves unworthy of our confidence, particularly after it messes up our New Year's resolutions.

Making resolutions, of course, is the sprezzatura — the art of being seemingly natural, and spontaneous — an activity that opens the year.

But before committing resolutions to paper or the digital realm, scribble or type 2023 a hundred times or more to cultivate hand muscle memory.

Frequently mislabeling 2022 for 2023 is a bane for the time being. But getting the right year early saves a heap of trouble. For want of a right year, many a conspiracy theory was birthed.

Anyway, while your private commitments to spiritual, moral, health, and other practical virtues are of great import, far more interesting isn't that you made them but the ways you'll find to break them.

The proverbial cliché that one's vows to better oneself are made and then planned, much like premeditated murder, to be broken is a frustrating paradox: It implies a weakness of will.

"Akrasia" is the ancient Greek word for such a predicament, which also broadly implies losing control of oneself.

Losing control, however, as philosopher J.L. Austin pointed out, is strange since whenever we succumb to the temptation to break New Year resolutions we do so calmly and with finesse.

So much so, as philosophy professor John Kaag puts it, "eventually they're in such shambles that they can't really be called resolutions at all, just guiding principles or fond memories."

Modern psychology, however, rescues us, recently finding we can in fact go easy on our supposedly rigid resolutions.

Historian Cody Delastry, writing for Aeon Magazine, reports that according to human decision-making processes researcher Rita Coelho do Vale, it is better to make our plans fail intermittently.

Splurging, therefore, on occasional luxuries like a sumptuous buffet while trying to shed weight is better than "end up failing anyway and getting so demoralized you give up your goal altogether."

Do Vale tells Delastry, taking a break is an everyday thing: "We all plan for breaks during the day — coffee, a nap — and we know that we will feel better after these rests. But with goals we simply don't think like this."

Some slack then on your supposedly robust but stressful resolutions is the key to successfully fulfilling resolutions.

Pay mind furthermore to the axiom that willpower is a finite resource. One only has so much willpower to use before one eventually needs to take a break to replenish it.

On balance then, the lesson is flexibility. Life hands us partly defined problems needing only moderately accurate solutions. Cheers.