New Year's Resolutions That Work

January 1^st is a day that many pledge their New Year’s resolutions. There is a website we use with our 8^th graders in Advisory at the beginning of the year called futureme.org at https://www.futureme.org/.  There you can write an e-mail to yourself and set it so it arrives at your inbox at the date of your choosing. We ask our 8^th graders to set yearly goals and then have an e-mail arrive the day before graduation containing the goals, so they can see if they have achieved their goals.  This website is a great tool for setting “resolutions” or commitments that we make to ourselves. 

 According to Statistic Brain forecasts, 45% of people make resolutions this time of year, and only 8% keep them.  In considering why so many have such a difficult time sticking to resolutions they make, a piece written by  Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, z”l- the Piaseczno Rebbe, struck me as I read it an article called, “Wishes Are Not Resolutions” by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, (whom I believe is a Yavneh graduate).  Rav Shapira was a rabbi in the Warsaw Ghetto who was later murdered by the Nazis in the Trawinki labor camp.

Rabbi Goldberg quotes from Rav Shapira’s “spiritual diary” called Tzav V’Ziruz where he has the following entry:

“If you want to know if you you’ve progressed on your spiritual path over the years, the way to judge is to look at your resolution – at your inner drive – and not at your wishes. Only the inner drive with which you work to attain your desired goal is called resolution. But if you don’t work but rather just want, this is not called resolution. It is just some wish that you wish for yourself to be blessed with that desired objective. For example, the pauper who works to sustain himself, this is a drive, because he is doing something constructive toward it. But the wish that he’ll find a million dollars is just a wish to be rich and not a resolution. Every Jew would like to be a tzadik (righteous person), but this is no more than a wish; he’d like to wake up in the morning and suddenly find himself a tzadik. Only the level and state of being that you seriously work toward can truly be called a resolution.”

There is a difference between a wish and a resolution.  “We claim to want to do them, but the truth is they are just wishes. We wish to wake up one morning, as the Rebbe said, and find ourselves suddenly doing those things or living that way. Stop wishing and to start making real resolutions. Personal growth is the result of making a plan, spelling it out and holding ourselves accountable to keeping to it.” Resolutions also take effort and require hard work. Wishes are magical- wishing upon a star, birthday wishes etc.  

Rabbi Goldberg suggests that if you make resolution, create a plan and then set it as a reminder on your phone (one suggestion).  Futureme.org- is another good suggestion.  I wish you good luck…no- that doesn’t sound right- wishing has nothing to do with it. I join you in supporting your resolution for a practical plan for change.

Advisory Update:

Sixth Grade:  Sixth graders discussed how they think they did in their classes this past trimester- before receiving their report cards, and how to have conversations with their parents about their grades.

Seventh Grade:  Students began to discuss resiliency as they began a new unit “When Life Gives You Lemons- Coping With Adversity In Life.”

Eighth Grade:  Students wrote an “instruction manual” for themselves for their parents- this is what they would want their parents to know about them and what “makes them tick.”