Mogama

A Solid New Year's Resolution: What Does It Take to Have a Happy New Year?


Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009

by
http://www.mogama.info

Thanks to Nenita Wells for her educative article on how people of various world cultures ring in the New Year. Reading Nenita's article was part of my preparation for a simple New Year's message I want to share with my church family. May I share some of that with the Internet community?

As we bid farewell to one year and welcome another, let it be clear that no matter what rituals we pull off, no matter how much we wish one another “Happy New Year”, one key to a Happy New Year beyond the first month of the year is this: Have good expectations of yourself.

Your happiness is tied to your expectations. Not just any expectations. Not go-nowhere expectations like “I expect people to treat me right, I expect others to be nice to me because I'm nice to them, I expect to change him/her, I expect him/her to be what I want him/her to be this year.”

Not those kinds of expectations. They will only deal you bottles of tears. For expectations to lead to happiness, they have to be reasonable expectations. You are as happy as getting what you reasonably expect. The more your reasonable expectations are met, the happier you become.

In short, a reasonable expectation has more to do with you and less to do with others. It's about who you will be, how you will be, what you will do, with whom you will associate, how you will behave or react to what you experience, what words you will speak, what your attitude will be.

As happiness is rooted in good expectations, expectations are linked to goals. Unless we set goals, we have no basis to expect the good to come our way. People who set goals will have a happier year than those who live blindly and just stumble along for a trip through time.

This is where a solid New Year's Resolution can really help. What is a New Year's Resolution but another word for a “goal” for the year? When I make a New Year's Resolution I nail down my goal for the year. For balance, my yearly expectation or goals or New Year's Resolution tend to fall into two basic groups:

  1. One is about my BEING – what's happening in my inner self, my spirit, soul, mind, heart. Example on emotion: “I will be quick to forgive and slow to take offense or become angry.”

  2. The other is about my DOING – how I behave, my actions. Example on health: “I will take my herbal multivitamins and drink green tea every day to build up my immune system.”

Those two broad categories are based on the assumption that I am a human BEING, and it matters what I DO. I am happy any time during the year when who I am (well being) matches what I do (my action or good behavior). ~mogama~

This Article has been viewed 1,070 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Mark Parsec
from Blogz 2 years 16 days ago.
Mogama,
 
I really enjoyed this article. Thank you for posting it here at Blogz. Good, sage advice. Happy New year to you, my friend
 
God bless you,
 
Mark
» left by Anonymous 2 years 16 days ago.

Thanks, Mark, for the compliment. ~mogama~

We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.