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Why New Year’s Resolutions are So Hard to Keep

But this writer is up for the challenge in 2021

Susan Poole
6 min readDec 28, 2020
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

It’s that time of year again. New Year’s Day is right around the corner and many of us are thinking about setting goals as we move into 2021. After the year we’ve just had, saying goodbye to 2020 should be easy and our expectations for the future may look a lot different than they have in the past. Thankfully, we can set the bar low as it’s hard to imagine next year being much worse.

We have a New Year’s Day tradition in our house. A glass jar marked “Blessings” sits on my kitchen counter alongside a small notepad and a handy pen.(That’s the idea anyway—usually, the pen is nowhere to be found.) Throughout the year, my family members jot down notes about things they’re happy about and then drop them into the jar. Now that we’re not all living under the same roof, sometimes my kids text me with something to add to the jar. Those messages always brighten my day.

The only rule about the Blessings jar is that all submissions must be positive. No complaints, disappointments or failures allowed. On New Year’s Day, we sit around the table and read them aloud to each other, one by one. If we’re not all in one place, FaceTime or Skype come in handy. It’s a great way to start the year together with a positive attitude, sharing memories and…

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Susan Poole
Susan Poole

Written by Susan Poole

Mother, lawyer, nonprofit executive, breast cancer survivor, and women's fiction author. https://susanpooleauthor.com

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