My High Resolve

New Year’s resolutions have a “bad rap.” We joke that whenever we “make a resolution,” we soon break it. The consequence can be that we give up on making any resolution so as not to delude or disappoint ourselves. Whatever our actual experiences are around making or keeping resolutions, we now have more understanding from social science and spiritual sources on how people change and what practices support our commitments to improve or to change. Howard Thurman, who has been called “one of the greatest spiritual resources of this nation,” offers this prayerful insight: “Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.”