Real Talk: Mental Health By Leslie McCaddon, Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at VVSD www.vvsd.net/cohenclinicsandiego
Jumping on the Resolution Wagon Dear reader, The holidays are upon us and if you’re like me your new journal and your new pen are already poised and in position to postulate a perfected new prototype of yourself (at least on paper) all before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st. Though we all may pretend that we aren’t turning into pumpkins (not because of an end to a spell, but most likely because of Grandma’s homemade stuffing and Aunt Julia’s apple crumble pie), the truth is rather humblingly predictable. I’ve been every version of a new version of myself on January 1st. I’ve been the health enthusiast, the fad diet nutritionist, the kick the habit/build the habit optimist, the better wife/better life, never-to-yell-again mom and many other shiny new things I have dreamt up for my personality and personal growth. I jump on that bandwagon of the New Year resolutions, and I jump hard. If I’m honest, none of my well-meaning resolutions have amounted to much—at least not in the ways I expected. Like most well-meaning humans, I start out strong, hit a few road blocks, craft a few well-worded
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justifications, and fall off the wagon by March (at the latest) with a thud. One may ask, why then would I repeat this insanity every single New Year’s Eve year upon year? It isn’t so that I’ll finally lose the weight. Or lose the attitude. Or finally become the kind of writer who finishes more than a neat 1200-word column a month. It isn’t just because I’m an optimist and an idealist and that I truly believe in Disney Happily Ever After Endings (even if my life has teetered more often towards a fairy tale by Grimm). It is because if there is one thing I have learned in my life so far it is that we continue in the direction in which we mean to go. What we prioritize gets our attention. And what we neglect to remember, we neglect to do. So, even if I’m yet to achieve all my resolutions, I am confident that my overall trajectory (albeit a bit bumpy at times on the graph), is trending towards the things I want it to. Without resolutions, I’m afraid my life would become a life of only reactions. My priorities would be dictated by the furniture my dog chews, the messes my teenagers leave in the family room, and the never-ending (and I mean never-ending) piles of dishes and laundry a family provides for me to “manage.” There is a reason “no more yelling” makes the resolutions list most years!
