Wishes for the New Year

My dear friends, readers, colleagues, and seekers of truth:Here we are, facing another New Year, another opportunity for wishful thinking … unless this year, perhaps, we can change the old pattern and really commit ourselves to action. Because without positive action, whatever we have today will be worse tomorrow by default.What are you committed to changing in the coming year? And how will you make sure that this time it isn’t just wishful thinking?Change necessarily means moving from one condition to another, and abandoning the old condition means sacrificing something. Whether we are aware of it or not, the old condition must have had certain rewards; otherwise we would not have embraced it for so long. We can measure the degree of our commitment by the degree of sacrifice we are willing to make.What are “New Year’s resolutions”? They are the hopes and wishes we make for ourselves. But sadly, they are wishes we rarely act on, because although we want something new, we never really commit to giving up the benefits of the old.Take me, for example.In the new year, I am committed to losing twenty more pounds; to refrain from working on Saturdays; and to spend no more than ten days a month consulting, so that I have more time to write books.And here is what I am willing to sacrifice: the pleasure of food, and a significant portion of my personal income.Why am I writing about my own New Year’s wishes, instead of wishing you a productive and profitable year? Because I find that the most difficult commitments to fulfill are the ones we make to ourselves. It is so much easier to break the promises I made to myself than the ones I pledged to others.So: In the coming year, may you fulfill the promises you made to yourself, and find the strength to make the sacrifices needed to make your commitment real.Amen.Sincerely,Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes