Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Pagans

Our Marketing department very occasionally encourages us to write blog posts in the form of lists. You know the type: 5 Ways to Cast a Spell, 7 Things You Must Know About Mayans, 14 Beauty Secrets of Witchy Women, 101 Ways to Procrastinate at Work. We’ve all seen these kinds of articles on the internet, and there’s a reason for it: people simply click on those more, apparently.

This fact really sunk in when I was at my parents’ house over the holidays. They’d just bought a hot spot so they finally had an Internet connection at home (yes, in 2012), and my dad spent a good hour just clicking on articles like “The 10 Top-Paying Jobs with 2-year Associate’s Degree,” “The Top 10 Healthiest Cities in America,” “The 10 Least Healthy Cities in America,” and on and on! I was like, really dad? He couldn’t stop looking at the numbered lists.

So I’m trying out a list-blog today, and hopefully you were so enticed by the title that you are here now, making this Llewellyn’s first viral post of 2013! If this one gets a lot of hits, my New Year’s Resolution will be to write more blog posts with a number in the title. Ha! Now, onto the list.

Disclaimer: This is not in any way a factual list; it is not grounded on a study, report, poll, or anything remotely resembling the scientific method. It’s compiled from things I saw Pagan friends posting on Facebook™. I hope you get a laugh out of them, and share your New Year’s Resolution with us in the comments!

10. New Year’s Resolution 2013: Live to see 2014. – Jason Mankey, who, contrary to what his resolution may lead you to believe, is not terminally ill as far as we know. He just parties a lot.

9. Skip the New Year’s resolution, it just sets up an artificial deadline that introduces failure, stress and pressure. Instead just every day choose to live according to a strategy that meets your goal and then ask yourself whenever you make a decision, is this what I want? Does this further my goal? Sometimes you might forget, and that’s ok, just remind yourself to ask. Rome wasn’t built in a day and most plans take time to implement. Just asking will make a change in behavior with no guilt associated with “breaking the resolution” since you didn’t make one. – Andrieh Vitimus, author of Hands-On Chaos Magic

8. Four R’s of Calendar Change Magic: Review, Reflect, Resolve, Renovate! – Selena Fox, founder and director of Circle Sanctuary

7. Let’s never speak of 2012 again. – internet meme

6. Most New Year’s resolutions fail because people try to do too much. They plan all of these massive changes and then when it comes down to it, they realize it’s a whole lot of work. It becomes overwhelming to keep up and they quit. Hell, if it wasn’t work, they would have made those changes already. If you want to change a bunch of stuff about your life, well that’s one thing, if you want to be successful at, do it a few small things at a time. Eventually those small things add up into bigger changes, you get the same end result without a ton of frustration and feeling overwhelmed. – Kerri Connor, author of  Spells for Tough Times

5. May we move past our impasses large and small. May the year be one of becoming. – David Wiegleb, owner of Fields Bookstore

4. I really do want to do more creative stuff – making art, doing crafts – than I have in recent years. That’s a nicely doable thing to put on the personal radar, methinks. HOWEVER, the big weirdness is that I am also considering an embarkation on the Path of Bloggery. – Thalassa Therese, who hates resolutions

3. We gather on a Facebook group called “Year of Fitness Challenge.” The group’s premise is simple: be active *every day.* On days when there isn’t time to do much, or when one is under the weather, traveling, or whatever, the goal is to be active for at least 10 minutes. Otherwise, we try to be truly active in some way that goes above and beyond our accustomed activity level. And most of us also set some sort of annual goal or challenge as well, although that’s happened kind of organically and isn’t “required.”

Each day, one of the members starts a thread for that date on the FB page, and everyone signs in to tell what they did, e.g., went to the gym for an hour, ran 20 minutes, hiked, walked the dog, dug up the garden, kayaked, etc.

And then we cheer each other on! It’s been a fabulous support system, and there isn’t one of us involved who hasn’t lost weight and/or become significantly more fit since we started. Even more, we’ve had fun cheering each other on and tackling goals many of us would never even considered before starting the challenge. – Susan Pesznecker, author of The Magickal Retreat

2. Open your Heart, Listen to Your God,

Flow with Your Soul,

Be the Epic You Are~ – Gede Parma, author of Ecstatic Witchcraft

1. Don’t just wish for a great 2013, make it so! (Yes, this is a meme as well, but it’s a damn good message, especially for us magical folk!) Or, in the immortal words of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, “Don’t dream it – be it.”

Other New Year’s Resolutions seen here and there: get crystal chandelier for kitchen, get tattooed, move to Bali, buy more guitars, accumulate more cats…. What’s yours?