How to avoid another wasted trip around the sun (Should you set new year's resolutions?)

Have you given any specific thought yet to what you want your life to look like this time next year? 

A lot of chatter recently has declared the importance of NOT setting resolutions, and letting yourself slide quietly into the new year with little-to-no expectations. If that works for you, fine. But now that the down-with-goals crowd is mostly done denouncing effort and expectations, we thought it’d be a good time to bring it up.

How do you want to be at the end of the year? 

The question of “who” you want to be can be confusing. There really are no distinct whos among you. So what if we change it to how? 

How do you want to be? 

Do you want to be kinder? 
Do you want to live more slowly?

Are you looking for adventure? 
Need freedom from baggage? 

Without a general target, you really can’t even set out confidently in the right direction.

So have you named anything at all that you’d like to see change in your life over the next year?

How to avoid another pointless trip around the sun 

In all likelihood, you’re already doing well. Probably better than you think you are. But a life without goals—a life of unquestioned “satisfaction”—may be little more than a cover for a life of complacency. So, if you can’t identify some areas of life you’re working to improve, you risk finding yourself at the end of the next twelve months with little to show for it but another pointless trip around the sun.

At HUMANITE, home of The Peacemaker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the newsletter where this was first published, we’re working for this “unselfish growth” in three buckets:

Here’s what that means and how we encourage normal, everyday people to join us on the journey. 

Peace for me 

Maybe your starting assumption on any given day is that you exist to serve. You serve your kids. Your partner. Your team. Your community. So whether you serve from a posture of nurturing or through protection, the one person you never stop to think about is you.

Peace for me is a reminder that you are an irreducible member of the family, the team, and the community you serve. The peace of the whole can only be as strong as its individuals. And without the individual, there is no family, no community, and no whole.

But if this is a struggle, you don’t have to think of it as “self-care” or any of the other self-referential phrases that have turned you off in the past. Think of it as essential to doing your service for others.

Is there one aspect of personal growth that would result in more inner peace for you over the next twelve months? See if you can answer this without making reference to anyone else.

Peace for us 

But maybe you’re a personal growth junkie. Maybe you’ve got so much self-help in your life, you’ve forgotten how to live with others without shoving your crystals, mantras, and prayers on them. 

Peace for us is a reminder that all manner of sin and salvation, personal development, and inner peace is situated in community, and specifically among those with whom we share some kind of identity (religious, ethnic, political, national, etc). None of our pain, and none of our promise, exists in isolation. We belong, if poorly.

The word “tribal” has been used a lot in recent years to denounce community, as though we will achieve world peace through the demolition of differences. But the community is an irreducible unit of society, and without it, there is no basis for any kind of higher embrace. 

Is there one way you’d like to find yourself living a little more at peace among your community by the end of the year? Is there some way you might contribute more to the good of the group? (Need help finding community where you are? Let us know.)

Peace for all

The problem is not that we organize by affinity but that we stop there. Most people reach their peak peace in contributing to their own community. It’s the truly rare explorer who is self-possessed enough to enter fully into the peace of those with whom they differ and disagree.

Peace for all is a reminder that there is a whole world out there, full of normal everyday people on their own journey to grow personally and in community to build a world where everyone rises. Not only do I not have it all figured out, but my family, my community, my politics, my country, my ethnic group, my religion, my gender, etc. are all both right and wrong. We all have something to give and something to gain on this journey from me, to us, to all.

Has your growth stalled out inside your own mind? Or in an affinity group? Is there a slight change you’d like to see in your life in order to expand your capacity to care for the peace of others who differ or disagree with you?

How to make the most of it

There are lots of ways to grow. But if unselfish growth is something you’re particularly interested in, we’d encourage you to give some thought to the me/us/all framework as a compass for your energy and efforts.