New Year’s Resolution: The Journey Inside

Are we in need of a New Year’s resolution? Yes, because at the end of the year, we need something to measure.

The idea of counting time is because we need some measure, we need milestones to know whether we are going forward or backwards in our lives. We need to look at ourselves as human beings in 2023 – not as our business, not our career, and not as other things. Those elements of ourselves matter but we take care of them as human beings. This is something that we must evaluate today. We need to evaluate every night. If we are lousy accountants of life, at least we must evaluate once a year.

If we evaluate once a decade it will be too late; believe me, we can’t fix it. Once a day, once a week, once a month – if we are evaluating, we will be able to take corrective measures in life. At least once a year is sufficient, that is, if we are evaluating.

“Have we moved forward as human beings or have we gone backwards?” is a simple way of checking how we were in 2022.

“Are we going to be a little more joyful, more relaxed, more compassionate, and more loving in 2023?”

We just need to check in on it. Do not go by your family’s judgment because there may be many local prejudices. We are unsure of vested interests, while family, neighbours, and friends are all vested interests. If we do not do what they think we should do, they will think we have fallen.

Some years ago, everybody may have thought we had fallen and lost our minds about a failure we made. Today, the same people clap their hands for different reasons. Even if we’ve taken positive steps, somebody else may be saying something. Do not let somebody else evaluate who we are. Within ourselves, we sincerely look and see if we have moved forward as human beings because we are one year closer to our grave. Are we going to at least die as better human beings? If not, live better. Suppose we die tomorrow morning; are we dying as human beings who are a little better than we were a year ago? This is an important question.

If we live as better human beings, it will be wonderful for us, wonderful for everybody around us. Suppose we die – at least there will be no regret about what a horrible creature we have been. If we are going to make people around us only joyful and relieved when we die, that’s not a good way to live. People should be joyful because our presence is good. They are joyful because our absence is not a good thing. It is important to check this and, in the coming year, we must have a plan for how to become better human beings than we were in 2022. We must have a plan of our own. People can help us with a route for how to negotiate our plan, but we must have a plan.

Don’t wait for cosmic geometry to come together. Cosmic geometry is in a wonderful place, otherwise, it would have crashed. We do not worry about where the stars are, what is the arrangement, or whether it is okay or not; it’s perfect. Are we going to ride it or are we going to be crushed by it? That’s a question. We must have a clear-cut plan for 2023. How we are going to be better human beings within ourselves is much more important.

What happens around us is the consequence of the way the world is running and the way we conduct things – many things. Consequences are okay but how we are is very important because this is what determines the quality of who we are. What happens — we have a little more, a little less, this happens, that happens — is not the quality of our life, that is just the content of our life. Content should not decide the quality, it is always the context which decides the quality of one’s life.

In the coming year, the plan must be good and workable. We should have an ambitious plan, not a stupid, silly, tiny plan. We need to decide that by the end of this year, we must be in a certain state. Time to plan! The coming year shall have a clear-cut plan and we work through a deliverable and ambitious plan, not a small one. We must evolve a plan like that. If necessary, write it down. Everybody must go by his or her prescriptions but if we are better, we must be functioning within ourselves at least with less friction, less struggle, and less turmoil. That is an indication that we are better.

We will find 2023 very diverting once we prepare for it. Yet we will still have poor taste in the coming year of 2023 as the next remains the same as this year – 2022. No one will regret coming to the new year so long as they have a better plan at the end of this year. Psychologically speaking, warmness will be inside someone by the time they walk their plan through the year. Planning the future should easily encourage someone.

Happy New Year!