A fresh start! I’ve been looking for this moment all year!

Don’t you love how everyone and everything gets a clean slate as soon as the clock strikes midnight, every December 31st?

New year is a time for change. It’s a time for resolutions, for renewed commitments. It’s a time to stop bad habits and pick up new, good, ones.

Every January, gyms see an increase in memberships, weight loss companies make a killing, gaining new dieters who have perhaps overindulged over the holidays. Nicotine Patch prescriptions go up, alcohol sales go down.
Usually, I’d be the first to jump on the resolution wagon. But not this year.

This year, my resolution is to not make any resolution.

No weight loss promise that I won’t keep, no exercise routine that I won’t do, no financial goal that I won’t achieve.

I will not set myself up for failure. I refuse to be an underachiever.

If, by any chance, I change my eating habits, it will be in my own time, at my own will, not because we switched to a new calendar. If I decide to jump on the elliptical machine, it won’t be because of the guilt or the shame I feel for not doing what I vowed I would. If I become a better person, it won’t be because I resolved myself to be one.

I don’t want anything in my life to be forced. I don’t believe forced things amount to lasting change.
So I won’t make any resolutions.

I will simply keep on doing what it is I do, naturally: Enjoy my kids, love more, give to my community, always pay it forward and be generous with my time and my money. The weight can wait.

Speaking of paying it forward…

Kindness and free coffee will pour aplenty at The Grind in Cornwall next Tuesday, January 10 in celebration of Ontario’s very first Common Kindness Day, thanks to an anonymous local sponsor.

Sponsored by a mysterious local benefactor who would prefer to remain unnamed, The Grind will give away 100 coffees (or tea) to the first patrons through the door on Tuesday from 8:30am onwards. The complimentary caffeine hit comes with just one simple catch: each person to receive a free coffee should  pay the kindness forward to another local.

The local benefactor founded the unofficial holiday Common Kindness Day to encourage Ontarians to appreciate the small acts of kindness that happen every day and pay them forward to others in their community. On Tuesday, let’s show lots of love to our Cornwall!