New Year’s resolution: Be less self-centered

    My dad – and countless other parents – told me as I started driving: “It’s not yourself that you have to worry about on the road; it’s the other people.”
    Whenever I’m driving, I always remember those words. They help me to be more cautious and aware of others around me because I know the advice is true. I also think those words are applicable to a number of other situations outside of driving.
    With the start of a new year, we hear about forming new year’s resolutions. Gyms are offering low-cost memberships, and fitness groups are being started to help people with one of the more common resolutions: staying fit or losing weight. Others will make resolutions to quit smoking or drinking or to enjoy life more as they attempt to become a happier, healthier version of themselves.
    Starting the year out with such intentions of changing our lives would seem to have great promise. Yet, according to a number of news reports, about 40 percent of people who make these resolutions will fail by the end of January.
    The question, of course, is why?
    It’s interesting to look at some of the most popular resolutions. Retailers and companies know losing weight and stopping drinking or smoking are the most popular, and they attempt to “help” us out by offering great deals and discounts. In doing so, it would seem that people would want to keep their resolution. Yet, this isn’t the case.
    I wonder if, perhaps, the reason that resolutions are often easy to break is because they are usually self-serving. Most of the resolutions we hear friends making – or have even made ourselves – are geared toward ourselves. We want to lose weight or overthrow our addictions in order to improve our image of ourselves, which can often be a healthy goal.
    Certainly, we have good intentions. But who holds us accountable? It can be easier to break our resolutions if we have no accountability. While we may have a goal in mind – perhaps an old dress or a cliché swimsuit to fit into – it doesn’t seem to hold much weight.
    Without doing any kind of study, I wonder whether our resolutions would stick past the initial month if they were less self-serving. Maybe in addition to our common resolutions, we can begin adding resolutions that serve others: volunteering with certain organizations, joining church groups, donating to particular charities.
    Another way of doing so might be to visit family or friends more often, particularly those who are in old folks’ homes or who have difficulty getting out to visit. I remember my parents trying to make a daily effort to visit my great-grandmother in the nursing home. After dinner, or sometimes before dinner, we would drive over and spend about an hour with her, talking and hearing about her memories of the past.
    At the time, I usually didn’t see the point in having to visit her every day, but now, I wonder if maybe she lived a bit longer because of our visits: we gave her something to look forward to.
    This new year, part of a healthier, happier outlook on life might involve doing something for someone else. By holding ourselves accountable and by doing the right thing, we might realize an aspect of ourselves that we never noticed before, and we might actually keep the resolutions that we make past the initial phase of excitement.
    Heather Bozant Witcher can be reached at [email protected].