Column by Dr. Ann Hollingsworth
As we close out 2021 and begin 2022, the process will be much like years past. We will have New Year’s events to celebrate the transition. For some, it will be a special church service, for some it will be a party with friends, and for some it will be a quiet time at home with traditional New Year’s foods. While this is a tradition, it still offers opportunity for a personal check-up.
Preventive maintenance is key to reliable operation of our vehicles and house structures. Yearly health check-ups are a good practice for ourselves and our animals. These let us know how well or not everything is functioning. They provide opportunity to take care of problem areas earlier rather than later and hopefully change the course of a problem.
As people, we are more than just what we drive, just what we live in, and just our bodies. We are also things like our minds, our spiritual inner selves, our relationships, and even our work. These parts of our lives also need preventive care and maintenance to serve us well. Many times people make resolutions for the new year and very quickly break them. Perhaps this is probably because the resolutions don’t really fit the need. Perhaps you do need to lose weight, but how you lose it will matter. You will only lose it if you do it in a way that you can like well enough to keep doing it.
Taking time to inventory ourselves will be a good first step to any determinations for change that we make for 2022. Once we do the check-up, we are much better prepared to set goals that fit what we need in both the what to do and how to do it. As the saying goes “If we fail to plan, we plan to fail.”
