The Best New Year ‘Resolutions’ List Ever.
I wished to have a recovery button for time traveling back when I made my first mistake. I was thinking that it was my first and last mistake. It was first, yes. But my mistakes never ended. So, if I had one button and lots of mistakes, I had to choose the right time for the button to use. Because of that, I’ve started to measure my mistakes. I asked myself “If I had that button, would I use it now?”. Sometimes I had awful days, nights, and months of consecutive. I wasn’t fine even one day in a month. Even during these tough times, I evaluated the idea of using the button and then I felt grateful that I didn’t use the button. Because I survived. Everything settled. As you see, my main need wasn’t a button.
I took a course called “The Science of Happiness” two years ago from Berkeley University. It’s fantastic. They were trying to explain what is happiness and meaningfulness in this course. In the first chapter, they were asking “If you have a happiness button, would you want to push it?”.
If you answer yes, I want to talk about it. Being happy today by pushing the button will cause you to suffer great deprivation tomorrow when you do not have the button in your hand. As long as your goal is to be happy, you will feel incomplete, unsuccessful, and unmotivated when you are not happy. The philosophical perspective that Aristotle calls eudomania focuses on the importance of meaningfulness rather than momentary happiness. Aristotle seeks happiness not by eating a temporary dessert, but by living a meaningful life. Actually, in my perspective, the list of New Year goals you made to change your lives follows the same mentality.
Wake up. You don’t need a button, a magic wand, or a ‘New Year resolution list’. You don’t need dopamine detox. Believe me, if you have a purpose, you will do this. No matter how much time you spend on social media.
I don’t believe the New Year resolution lists. But I believe in New Year intentions. If you have goals on your list, you always search for motivation to do this. And if you can’t do this, it makes you demotivated. When you are focusing on just one goal, you miss the others and the joy. But if you have purposes on your list, you release your dopamine spontaneously and don’t need a pusher. Purposes help your awareness.
If you don’t want to blame social media, Meta’s algorithms, or your workload for anything that can’t be done in your life this year; choose a purpose for yourself!
