Why? Let me tell you

You know the stats. Maybe not the exact stats—23 percent of people quit their New Year’s resolutions by mid-January; 64 percent have abandoned them by February—and you know your own history. But still you do it! Admit it! What did you whisper to yourself in bed last night as you drifted off to sleep? Exercise more, eat healthier, create a budget, read more books, be better organized, spend more time with three-dimensional friends and less time friending. And so on.

Health and fitness, money management, and personal development are the 1, 2, and 3 most common resolutions. There are all kinds of reasons we don’t keep these resolutions, or don’t keep them past the first few weeks: The goals are too big, too amorphous, without accountability. They are self-critical (masquerading as self-empowering). What we’re really saying to ourselves is that we are sedentary, disorganized junk food eaters who mismanage our money and spend way too much time staring at our phones. So we start off the year self-flagellating.

Ouch.

I’d like to present an alternative. Instead of castigating ourselves for all the things we did wrong in 2024 (or, yikes, maybe for years), how about considering WHY we might want to change our habits and behaviors. And let the why empower us.

Let’s focus on the #1 resolution: Live a healthier life (mostly reduced to—pun intended—losing weight) Why? There are the little venal whys, as in: I want to look good. I want to attract the admiring gaze of others. I want everyone at my zillion-year high school reunion to be in awe. Then there are the bigger, better whys: I want to feel good. I want to have energy and vitality. Right, right. But why? 

So here’s my Why, courtesy of one of the most inspiring talks I have been privileged to hear, which came in the form of 20 minutes of off-the-cuff remarks by Deborah Szekely, the still-working-three-days-a-week, 102-year-old co-founder of Rancho LaPuerta, a decades-ahead-of-its-time wellness retreat. 

She talked about life lived in thirds, with the 60-90 year-old span (obviously, she’s outlived that) potentially being the best. By that time in one’s life, she said, you’ve learned some things about the world, about human nature, about yourself. You’ve seen things. You’ve tried things. You’ve acquired skills and maybe, maybe some measure of wisdom. What if you also had health, high-level wellness, vitality, curiosity, and on-fire creativity? In other words, what if you had the energy and optimism to use the knowledge and wisdom you acquired over the years in new, exciting, and important ways? In meaningful ways. In ways that helped and supported your community. In ways that made a difference.

There’s your Big Why, friends. Welcome to 2025 when we all need to bring our A game.