A New Year's resolution worth sticking with

My family is sitting around the table, eating our last dinner of the year. 

Once we’re done with the food, my daughter Alice says, 

“I think we should share our wishes for the New Year.”

“We can’t do that, baby,” I tell her, “if you say a wish out loud then it doesn’t come true.”

“I don’t really mean a wish, I mean more like the things we want to try to do.”

“Oh, more like goals? Sure, we could do that.”

We could, I think, but I am not sure I want to. 

“I’ll go first!” Alice shouts. “I want to cook more, read more books, do better at my circus class, and help more in the house.”

“Those are great goals, baby.”

I look from my daughter to my wife, and Patricia says, 

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to read more than my three books per year, but I do want to finally sort out my Spanish citizenship.”

I smile and raise my eyebrows at her, because she’s been putting that off for at least 10 years.

Before I can ask Olivia, she says, “I want to run more and draw more!” 

I’m not really sure she can draw any more than she already does, but she’s 5, those seem like fair goals to me. 

Patricia says something to Olivia, but I don’t catch it because I’m thinking it’s going to be my turn next, and I only have one goal in mind:

To be a father who doesn’t lose his calm. Who doesn’t raise his voice. Who never shouts. 

It was my goal last year too, I even made a note on my phone called “Zen Dad,” where I kept track of every day when I didn’t lose my cool with the kids. 

In 2025 that number was up to 339. 

The kids don’t know I do that. Not sure my wife does either. I don’t want to explain all of this to them, because I really don’t know if losing it with the kids 26 days out of 365 is any type of achievement—or if it’s abut 26 days too many. 

But they keep discussing their goals, and nobody asks me about mine. 

The conversation moves on, the kids want dessert now, and it looks like I got away with it. 

As we get ready to enjoy the fireworks, I’m still torn.

I know New Year’s resolutions are nonsense, they rarely last beyond January; maybe I didn’t want to share mine because nobody is going to expect me to stick with it anyway.

But, if I’m honest, I didn’t…

Because I’m afraid they might. 

Instead of promising to go to the gym more, try this 

The more stories I tell, the more I’m convinced: the most important ones happen only in our head. They are the things we realise, the insights we gain about ourselves, the thoughts and feelings that go unsaid. 

And that’s the real tragedy of it: because they go unsaid, they get forgotten. They illuminate you for a brief moment, then vanish. You don’t turn a fleeting insight into any type of wisdom, and you probably don’t even remember the meaningful things you could’ve shared with the people you care about. 

I’ve tried to encourage you to keep track of your moments many times, and I hope some of you have been convinced, but I’m not going to do that again today. I’m going to ask you instead for something simpler: 

Don’t let these thoughts and feelings go unsaid anymore. Share them with your partner, with your kids, with your friends. You don’t have to tell stories about them (even though that would be great too 😉): just find someone you care about and tell them, “I just thought of something I wanted to share with you.” 

If you’re not tracking your moments, you’re still going to lose a lot of them, but that ’s ok; if you get in the habit of not keeping so much private, you’ll still give the people around you a much better chance to know you. And the more open and honest you are, the more they will be in return. 

Now that is a New Year’s resolution worth sticking with 🤘

-Francisco 

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