Note From Elisabeth
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
It’s that time of January—that moment when the radical resolutions of the New Year soften into good intentions and eventually dissolve into the inertia and the busyness of being in our lives now. The grand, dramatic gestures of change are sinking into the quicksand of real life. It’s a moment when most of us shrug and accept “Life As It Is”-- or, we berate ourselves for failing at these very specific, detailed resolutions despite our best intentions.
As parents, when we see our children failing to live into their resolutions-- or remark on our own inability to honor them-- we can unintentionally shut down the possibility of growth. For all their momentary spurring of action, resolutions ride on the emphasis of achievement and outcome; they live on the polarizing binary of either success or failure. So when we fail to lose the weight, or study for three hours straight daily, or whatever it is we have determined to achieve, we can conveniently let ourselves off the hook: after failure, we can dump our date with resolution.
Visiting in early January with one of the families we support in college admissions strategy, I was struck by something our student said: “This decade ahead is probably the most important of my life in terms of determining my story and the person I will become. I can’t be bogged down by petty resolutions; I need to discover the THEMES of my life!”
Rather than focus on a resolution (or three or seven, as the case may be), consider focusing on a theme for the year ahead. Perhaps that theme is a word (Grit, Patience, and Gratitude all come to mind as solid options), or perhaps the theme is a mantra, a phrase, or a quote like “The perfect is the enemy of the good” (Voltaire), or “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid” (Goethe). Let the theme be unburdened by the objective possibility of concrete failure at a mission. And let the theme be something you can come back to in the midst of both achievement and failures, to determine whether the theme has been honored-- whether core values have remained intact or been developed regardless of external outcome.
Encourage your child to answer the questions below and arrive at a theme to guide his or her actions and priorities for the year ahead:
What are the qualities I like most in myself? How would I like to develop these parts of myself in the year ahead?
What are the qualities I like least in myself? How would I like to improve these parts of myself in the year ahead? Can I see any way to transform these traits into positive ones?
What do I love? What truly excites me?
What do I live by? What are my values? What are my priorities?
If we can build our day-to-day choices on our core, guiding principles rather than on outcomes and achievements, it’s going to be a fulfilling year...and a meaningful decade.
Elisabeth Gray
Founder and Director
Oxford Tutors NYC