Day 20 - Forging The Resolve In A Resolution

 Here we are on New Year's Eve and I think about how so many people, at the start of a new year, are quick to make resolutions with grand and mighty goals, strategize and go in fast and strong attacking bad habits and fighting to make changes, and then not long into the year, the resolutions die - whether by a slow decay or a huge crash-and-burn.

Why does this happen?  See, for me, it's always led me to have the response of, "Well, then, I'm just not going to make any resolutions because I never keep them."  But 2016 has led me to make a bunch of changes, mostly small ones but a few large ones too, and after reading a book about habits (why and how they form and how to change them) I decided to look at this whole resolution thing again.

So the next question is - how can I be different?  How can I be one of the few that make a resolution and keep it?  What do I need to change in order to make it stick?  Well, let's do some research.  


The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term "resolution" as "the act or process of resolving" and breaks it down further into seven sub-categories.  Only the first three apply to making a resolution, since then the fourth relates to music,  the fifth to science, the sixth to language, and the seventh to math.


Here are the first four sub-categories in the definition of "resolution:"
  a :  the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones
  b :  the act of answering :  solving  
  c :  the act of determining  
 
Tomorrow I'm going to dig deeper into those three and talk about making a resolution that I, you, we can actually keep.  Today, let's break down the root of the word instead.  Looking at the word "resolution" you see a few other that it may come from, mainly resolve/solve and solution.  Interestingly, to resolve or solve is truly the act of creating a solution, which is what making a resolution is all about.

So let's be different!  For me, for you, for US - let's make ones that actually stick for the whole year!