Resolutions, Part 2: Baby Steps

Right around this time every year, I do my best Harry Houdini impression and disappear for a day. I turn off my cell phone, drive out to someplace where people don't know me, and spend the day thinking about the last year and what I'd like to accomplish in the coming year. Usually I pull out my notebook and jot down thoughts and ideas as they come to me throughout the day. I've been doing this for some time now, and I've found it to be a really helpful exercise. It gets me started on the right foot, ready to enter the new year with a purpose rather than being perpetually scatterbrained.

Last week, I came across some notes I'd made on one of my getaway day trips from a few years ago. At first it was one of those cute nostalgic moments where you laugh at the things you were thinking about in years past, things that your current, more mature self finds silly and trivial by comparison. But as I kept reading, I started to notice the same things popping up on my lists year after year. Then I realized some of those things I had written down three, four, five years ago were still on my list in 2011, and my heart sank. After all these years, I hadn't made any progress. I hadn't changed.

Change. Why is it so hard? Why does it sound so simple when we talk about it, but next to impossible once we try to live it out? The answer to this is complicated, but the short version goes like this: we develop habits based on our behavior, and our central nervous system picks up on this and engrains our habit patterns into our psyche. Once a particular action is done long enough, it integrates into the normal ebb and flow of a person's life. This is why putting aside an old habit can sometimes feel like going off drugs. In actuality, the same chemical reaction is taking place inside the brain because the psychological status quo has been upset. As a result, one cannot learn new habits without simultaneously unlearning old habits. Herein lies the tension that makes change so difficult. It is not only the addition of something new, but the subsequent subtraction of something old that creates that inner struggle we are so familiar with.

The bottom line is that real change, change that takes place in the depths of our being, takes time to cultivate. It's easy to get discouraged when we pull out last year's resolutions and feel like a failure when we didn't accomplish what we hoped to. But change usually requires more time than we think. In an instant-gratification age, this is one area where we'd do well to practice the lost art of patience. It's okay to be in process, to be taking small steps towards a goal rather than giant leaps. The idea is to keep moving forward. Thomas Merton once said that nobody wants to be a beginner, but the fact is we will never be anything but beginners for as long as we live. Perhaps our motto should be "baby steps." Maybe we'll get there someday, but for now we're just toddlers learning to walk, taking baby steps towards becoming the people we were created to be.