How Cancer Has Shaped My New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year 2013! I know this will be a great year. I can feel it in my heart.

While the passage of time, the turning of the page and the ringing in of the New Year brings many an optimist and philosopher to take pen to paper and list their resolutions for the year, I ask, "What is a resolution"?

Some may think they are making New Years resolutions, but, in reality, they're good intentions. Others sit down to think over, or write their good intentions, but, in reality, they're fleeting moments of thought at best. So why do people do them?

For some, they do it just because. For others, it helps them get into a positive frame of mind, and set up the new year on a fresh page, for that new start. For a few, it really does help them organize their life. In reality their resolutions are more like affirmations. Going back and reading them over regularly is one way to change your life, and give it more meaning.

I have never been very good at New Year's resolutions. Yes, I used to make them, simply because everyone would ask me what they were. Yes, there was thought put into them, but my spirit was never really there. I needed to follow through with habits that were conducive to seeing them through with success.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I got brave and decided that I was not going to make any more resolutions. I made a promise to myself: that I was going to win my battle, succeed in my journey, and be around for another year. At year end I also gave thanks and felt the gratitude in my heart that I was around and thriving.

This has worked out well for me. Until now.

Yes, I still get that sentimental tug at the heart strings when the ball in Time Square in NYC is about to drop, signaling the start of a New Year. As I get up to hug the friends and loved ones I am celebrating the New Year with, I still look up with moist eyes and set my intention to be around for another year. I am still grateful.

But this year, and I don't know if this is a sign that I have evolved in my cancer thrivourship, I wanted to set out more ambitious intentions for my year.

One of the things I have been working on over the past year is my inner self. I have been thinking more positively and reading many blogs and websites from bloggers such as myself. There's a really inspiring community out there! My meditation is now well entrenched and it's intuitive. If I feel my breathing start to quicken, I can slowly centre and bring it back down.

Over the year, I have learned to be grateful for the present. I have blossomed and lived more in the present. I used to be a much more "futuristic" thinker, and it was about time I pulled my head out of that hole.

So here I am, at the start of 2013, and suddenly, as a result of all this work, I am feeling that my simple "being here for another year" gesture is not enough. And not that I am snubbing my nose at those going through cancer now, or those new survivors out there. It's just that I have graduated to the "much more waiting for me" department!

And so, at the risk of calling them resolutions -- in which case my old self may step in for a moment and force me to fail -- I have some crazy and wild intentions this year. The most important one being that I will FINISH. I will finish a half marathon. I will finish writing that book that I started. I have finished 2012 in a good place, and will close 2012 in an even better one.

So whatever you want to call them -- resolutions, intentions, or just good, old fashioned goals -- be kind to yourself, and don't put any pressure on your shoulders. Just be a better person!

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