The One and Only Resolution Worth Keeping

It’s early February and one thing is clear. Those resolutions made New Years Day have already bit the dust. You haven’t been to the gym in the past two weeks. Eating healthy went out the door when the cold spell hit. Your television habits haven’t changed and you haven’t opened Moby Dick or Great Expectations or War and Peace or any of those classics you promised you would begin this year.

Face it. You’ve conceded defeat and you’re beating yourself up for it.

Don’t.

The problem isn’t that another year has begun and you’ve already given up any hope of keeping those resolutions. The problem is that you made the wrong resolution.

There is only one resolution each of us should make. It’s simple but it’s powerful. The resolution, you ask? BE SELFISH!

Yes, I said it. Be selfish. We’ve been taught since childhood that selfishness is a sin. Only bad children are selfish. Selfish children become selfish adults. But if you think about it, every great or successful person has been or is selfish.

If you think about selfishness like the airplane rule, you’ll understand what I mean about being selfish. The flight attendant always says in case the air masks are needed, place the mask over your own face and then assist the person with you. Why? You can’t help someone else if you are incapacitated. It’s not selfish to save yourself first. Remember the adage “self preservation is the first law of nature.” That is as true a statement as one can make. There is nothing selfish about that.

Let me reiterate. Being selfish is simple to declare but when lived, you and everyone around you will recognize the power of that resolution. And remember, how you live that resolution is as important as the resolution itself.

For example, being selfish can be used for good. Every person we think of as a good person, a hero if you will, was selfish. Recently Nelson Mandela died and his heroism was heralded around the world. He was seen as one of the most selfless beings on the planet. Yet if you think of him in the context of being selfish, his heroism proves the point. Mandela was selfish in his belief that South Africa should no longer practice apartheid. For his unwavering belief, he was imprisoned for 27 years. Was he a hero? Absolutely! Was he selfish? Absolutely! That selfishness caused his children to be raised without him and his wife to take care of the household without assistance. Yet his selfishness freed a nation and made him the first president of a democratic South Africa.

On the other hand, selfishness can be used to cause great harm. Our government has continued a war so that another country can be deprived of its natural resources. Those resources will be owned by a very select few people who will use them to gauge the rest of us. That selfishness is greed and greed can be as much a by-product of selfishness as heroism. It depends on the person being selfish and how he or she interprets the resolution of being selfish. And that’s why being selfish is such a powerful resolution.

So instead of dwelling on the bad connotations of selfishness, let's focus on the good.

Being selfish means

• waking up every day saying thank you to the Creator, giving yourself a big hug and declaring you are more than enough.

• loving yourself the way you want someone else to love you.

• ridding yourself of any person who does not recognize how wonderful you are and you won’t feel guilty about it.

• loving your body so much you will no longer treat it like a garbage can. You will eat what makes you body feel good.

• enjoying your body so much that you like to make it move by doing movements you enjoy be it dancing or swimming or walking.

• resting your body and your mind every day for eight hours sleep.

• taking time to read, nap, meditate or do nothing and not feel guilty about it.

• saying no to anything that goes against your better judgment regardless of who is doing the asking.

• being true to you without apology.

• being the best you can be without comparison.

• you share your joy.

Sounds like a lot, I know. It is but then again, it isn’t. The first two parts of the resolution will make the other parts that much easier to follow.

You made it to another year. Don’t wallow in the resolution abyss of resolutions already shot to hell. Be thankful you made it through another year. Be grateful for what you have in life. And be selfish.