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I don’t do it anymore–make New Year’s Resolutions, that is. After 60+ years, I know better.

Evidently, I’m in good company. Mark Twain wasn’t too keen on New Year’s Resolutions, either.

…Mark Twain has written of New Year’s Resolutions, “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.” read full post here

But there is one thing I do each year. I pull out the books I’ve been journaling in for over thirty years, and I reread some of my favorite sayings collected over the years.

Some of them mean something totally different to me now then they did twenty or thirty years ago when I first wrote them. Take for instance this one by Eleanor Roosevelt, No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

When I first wrote this in my journal back in the sixties, women were scrambling uphill to establish equal footing with men. I recited it out loud, over and over again like a mantra. The “little woman” stereotype in me was attempting to break out and reach for hitherto impossible things. Believe me, it wasn’t an easy concept to grasp–this freedom to be whoever I wanted to be. It was a time when every young woman needed a mantra and this one was mine.

I saved another one from Eleanor Roosevelt that still rings out loud and clear to me. You must do the thing that you think you cannot do. This one started me on the path I’ve walked for the rest of my life.

I’ve learned that I don’t always have to conform. I think the reward for conformity is everyone likes you but yourself. Attributed to Rita Mae Brown.

Learning who to befriend is big, too. Claudette Colbert said it best. It’s more important what’s in a woman’s face than what’s on it.

I like to believe the older I get, the wiser I become. Reading over the sayings that are dear to my heart each year reinforce that belief. I’ve learned it’s important to “live” from Dorothy McCall. One cannot have wisdom without living life.

Also, from Joan Baez, You don’t get to choose how you are going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.

And it appears many people are collectors of sayings. These are a few from Lee Cantrell’s blog:

I’d like to think that this one is a good description of me:
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Lastly, since I just quit my job, I guess this one is really me:
“I’d rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.” – George Burns read full post here

Once I’ve read through all my journals, there’s no reason to make a resolution. Life leads, and I follow.