Thursday, January 1, 2015

New Year — New Dreams

Every year I say I'm going to do better, be better, feel better but somehow I always feel like I've missed the goal. I've never really been able to keep a single New Year's resolution past the first three months of the year either. So why do we make goals in the first place? Why do we dream of things going our way when they usually don't?

Because without a dream or a goal in our lives, we merely exist with nothing to look forward to. Why go out of our way to do something if it doesn't mean anything? Even animals have goals. I don't know if they have dreams like humans, but they strive to find the best food, the safest place to have their young and the strongest male to breed their young.

Humans go beyond that now. Most of us have the necessities like a roof over our heads and food on the table. So now we look for new things to strive for, new goals to reach. The common ones are to lose weight, get healthier, organize our lives better, stop smoking or drinking.


Maybe those of us who are goal-challenged in life should make easier goals that we can achieve so we feel better about the accomplishment. Then we can set a slightly higher goal and one day, we'll meet the big one we had wanted all along. Constantly failing day after day and year after year only creates a rut that we can't get out of. We feel bad about ourselves and begin to believe that we can never do better at all. I think it would be better to make no goals than to set ourselves up to constantly fail.

What are some easier goals that would help us to feel better about ourselves?
     Donate a book to a library.
     Read the paper or a short story to a shut in
     Put the garbage can back from the street for the elderly
     Buy a few five dollar Starbuck's cards and give them to random
     people you meet.
     Give someone a flower you don't know.

Funny how doing things for others makes me feel good about myself. I really enjoy seeing the surprised smile. It warms my heart and takes away a little of the disappointment I feel in myself.

Do yourself and someone else a good deed and pass on a smile in this 2015 New Year. I'm going to ask you about it when the year is almost over. Don't disappointment me.  I'm watching you!


Marla Monroe
 

1 comment:

  1. Those are worthy events to do. I don't do resolutions, but I do focus on goals. This year is kinda lofty even for me. Two serials (four stories each), and two full novels. If there's a couple of novellas in there, I'm good with that, too. But my biggest goal is to start small to build into bigger ripples, and I think that's what you're suggesting here. Great idea. :)

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