Brian Laird on WNYC, and to end the show today, we ask, does the concept of New Year's resolutions

need an overhaul that requires a more thoughtful approach

instead of grand, one-time goals, making a list. That's what author Salaka Joad

proposes in her recently published substack piece titled Against Resolution. She writes that

resolutions are outcome-driven and binary, success or failure, repair,

or ruin. They rely on force and control to produce change, unquote. Now, those are hardly the

conditions under which we tend to become better versions of ourselves, she argues. Instead,

she turns to rituals, daily, sometimes short-term

practices that don't overhaul who she is as a person or attempt to, but instead make day-to-day

life and work a whole lot more enjoyable. So Lake Jouad is the author of a best-selling memoir,

and most recently,

The Book of Alchemy, a creative practice for an inspired life. And she joins us now. So Lika, welcome to WNMYC. So glad you're on with us. Thanks so much for having me on.

And listeners, does this resonate with you? Tell us a story. Looking back, where your successful New Year's resolutions, if you had any, actually rituals? Perhaps instead of setting the broad goal of maybe losing weight, you decided to find a gentle workout class that you enjoy enough to actually attend regularly or pick any other example. 212-433 WNYC, or did the binary of a New Year's resolution ever work for you

past, say, January 15th, 212, 433-9692.

So against resolutions is the title of your piece. Maybe start with a story you tell

about the time you set a resolution to run a half marathon, all while in treatment for leukemia.

What inspired you in the first place? And tell our listeners what ended up happening.

So like a lot of people, I used to make very ambitious resolutions for

myself that ran the gamut from, you know, working out a couple of times a week to learning, to

meditate, to pie in the sky ambitious work goals. And when I was 24, I was recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

And I remember coming across a story in a magazine about a cancer survivor and former

pro athlete and reality TV star who between his first and second transplant had run the New York City Marathon.

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