The Best New Years Resolution You Can Have
Here’s a quick exercise — look back on the past year and ask yourself, “What do I remember?”
Now, if you had infinite time, you could probably start from January first and start recalling things, look at pictures to fill in gaps, look at your journal to see what you were doing or thinking about.
But, and this is a big but, the first few things you remember are the things that will last through the years to come. Those are the things that you’ll think back to in 5–10 years, saying, “Remember that trip!” Or that dinner, that weekend. that thing.
And I’d argue that the very best New Years Resolution is to have more of those moments in a year. Not a new exercise routine or promise you’re going to break, but these moments — memories.
And this is so doable; it hurts.
You’d be thinking something like, “How do I make those memories happen?” You don’t just make a memory. This isn’t anything you can just “optimize” for — or so you might be thinking.
After all, these moments are unique, different, and they have something special that makes it all so memorable. So how the hell do you make that a resolution when you’ve got no visible way to make it happen? You can’t force this, right?
And look, you’re right, you can’t force these — but, you can lay the groundwork to let them happen.
Here’s an experiment, tell me which emoji draws your attention first:
🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🧁🍕
🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Twenty-nine slices of pizza and one cupcake.
When your month consists of 29 days of routine, whenever you break the pattern, that’s the event that sticks out.
That’s what you remember.
I think you can see where I’m going with this…
Call me crazy, but as humans or intelligent(ish) beings, we’ve been built for many things, and pattern recognition is one of them.
And when our whole modern lives are day in day out, the same — the pattern becomes…
