Do you resolve? I am hit and miss. Mostly I like to avoid creating goals to break and then cudgel myself with. But I do find the new year a good time to reflect and this year I’m giving a shot at two things:
First, no soda in 2023. This is going to be tough for me. And I’m an abstainer not a moderator so I have to go all or nothing. Maybe I’ll give myself free day Saturdays but have to go pretty extreme to make it work.
Second, I want to do better at really seeing and appreciating people. I lost a cousin recently and, while reflecting on my own experiences with them and reading other people’s tributes, I realized that there was a lot more to this person than I ever recognized and I deeply regret that I didn’t see it sooner. I need to do better.
So, how about you? Any resolutions?
Wheat & Tares 
Here is my long-term objective (in terms of personal perspective):
“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
– Honoring the Past (and being gracious to myself and my past).
– Being in the Present as much as possible.
– Planning better for the Future (drinking water/self-care and other random stuff to be thought through).
In 2023, I want to change the way I look at the gospel, membership in the church, and my spiritual self to be consistent with this quote from a blog I saw the other day (just simplify everything to this):
“In John 13:35, Jesus taught us how His disciples (followers) would be recognized by others: “By this shall all people know that you are my disciples – if you have love one to another.” Contrary to popular belief, the sign of those who are true followers of Christ (what some would call “righteous”) is not their obedience to the rules, their devotion to the doctrines/practices of their religion, or the frequency of their scripture reading, prayers, and temple worship. It is not the correctness of their beliefs or their knowledge of truth.
Jesus taught that true discipleship is seen the LOVE we have for those around us.
Let me say that again. Jesus’ followers will be known for their LOVE OF OTHERS. Not for their love of obedience, their love of rules, their love of conformity, their piety and worship, their correct beliefs, or their devotion to their religion.
Therefore, if our love of our religion has become a BARRIER to our ability to love our spiritual siblings, then we have missed the point of Jesus’ ministry.
We will be known as His sincere followers because of our LOVE.”
I’m tired of the church rat race. It’s time to change. It’s time to simplify.
I’m still committed to my workouts, nearly daily. I have several physical conditions that remind me that I need to work out if I stop working out, sacroiliitis being a big one. My only worry is that the gym will be overly crowded for about two weeks in January. Then the New Year’s Resolutions will taper off.
I think that’s a great goal @Elisa, no soda in 2023. I may consider joining you and going no soda that isn’t Diet Coke. I think it’s a goal I may be able to nail.
What’s on my mind for 2023? I wish this were light, but it is kind of heavy. Am I going to continue giving the church and my membership in it so much thought and energy, or just walk away? I’ve spend so many hours working to figure out where I stand and what I want my relationship with the church to be. Honestly, if my life weren’t so enmeshed with the church through extended family and work associates, I may simply walk away and not look back. I cannot tolerate the direction in which the church is moving on nearly all issues. As a matter of moral conscience, I am struggling to support the church in any way, even locally.
I grew up outside the Mormon belt, and have many friends who are not members of the church. What is strange is how much closer I am to this friend cohort than I am to my friends who are LDS. My relationship with my non-member friends is more open. There is more honest disclosure and less masking. There is greater mutual respect and far less judging. From them I receive more love and support and fewer proscriptions. Most of my relationships with member friends are transactional and born out of convenience. In 2023 I’m gong to try and figure out why. Is it just me? And how does this inform what I choose to do.
And I’m still processing and hope to bring closure to questions I have about the ways in which the church failed my children. My kids are kind, guileless and brilliant individuals who are intellectually honest and virtuous. Their experience as youth in the church was uniformly terrible. They often felt invisible. They felt judged when they asked difficult yet honest and well founded questions. Their service achievements had lasting and extraordinary impact on our community, and yet because that work fell outside of the church’s youth programs, they were not recognized nor appreciated by their youth leaders for helping the less fortunate and working to make our community healthier and more literate. Their experiences with the church confused them, and set them on a path to find better social and organizational contexts in which to grow and contribute to bettering the world. I’m still trying to identify why, exactly, our church is so rutted and its social fit so narrow. The cost to the church for losing so many youth is incalculable. Our church feels unhealthily restricted and so parochial. I have a child, our oldest, who worked hard to stay connected and engaged, but is finding it difficult if not impossible to relate to our faith because culturally she is not at the mean.
Despite my disappointment in the church, I’m battling a deep sadness that our family’s direction is fundamentally shifting away from the faith my family has been a part of for six generations. Yet at the same time, I feel weight lifting and my entire family feels energized and are eager to discover what beautiful things lie ahead.
My 2023 resolution is to make definitive decisions. More or less, do I stay and keep banging away to make things better, or put down my books and blogs and walk away.
@Faith Over Fear, so beautifully put. The thumbs up button only counted one click, but I hit that button a hundred times after I read your comments.
I’ll share two goals.
The first is to spend less time on Reddit in general and on r/exmormon in particular. (I am weighing quitting Reddit cold turkey.)
The second is to make a more focused effort to develop friendships beyond my (former) church community. For so much of my life my community has been church-centric and I’ve avoided the world. I want I change that.
@Faith Over Fear – that’s an amazing goal and honestly what humanity needs.
I resolve to say no more about the RESEARCH CONFIRMED health advantages of prohibited black coffee and green tea, or to bore you further with a recitation of the deleterious effects of LDS-endorsed Diet Coke.
Amen
I’ve joined an exercise class – I’ve already been going for two weeks, so I hope I can stick to that through the New Year.
I’ve got ideas for blog posts, which means I have to write almost daily.
I still have zero desire to travel. About half my coworkers leave the country twice a year, and the other half vacations in Florida and goes on cruises. I’m getting really self-conscious about my homebody ways, but not yet enough to make a goal to get out of my comfort zone and go somewhere. Anyone else here a total homebody?
My New Year’s resolutions are generally just a culmination of things I’ve been thinking I ought to prioritize. I don’t hold myself strictly accountable, because that’s just self-nagging.
I generally don’t attempt formal New Year’s resolutions. But I’ve done Lent a couple times in recent years and valued that. The abstinence from something I indulge in is healthy, and it totally puts me in the mood for Easter. Easter can really feel like a culmination when I do Lent. So I’m thinking about that again this year. Soda pop is DEFINITELY a good candidate for that this year. I also gave up butter cream frosting one Lent. Being me, that was a significant change.
Janey, also a homebody here, and the pandemic has only exacerbated that tendency. These days I force myself to go sit in a coffee shop at least once a week, even when I’m not in the mood. Or eat a meal out. I’m fortunate I can arrange these at times the places won’t be too crowded. And I’m committing to check in with friends and siblings more often. Still, being a homebody has its upside. I like that I’m really good at filling a day at home in meaningful ways.
Leave the time field.
Dismantle conformity.
Detach from everything.
Be my best friend.
Not allow the flickity shmickities to invade my true space. Very common 7 months ago. Huh why…why do these things come up like this…..I’m changing my original train of thought to something that sounds more acceptable. Yeah cutting that out. Caring about how things are taken by others.
“no soda in 2023” Serious? Dang, putting the guilt trip on me. Maybe I will try…..