Let’s talk about goals and the New Year.
It has been set as a standard to make resolutions in January, at least here in Western Hemisphere.
But what happens next?
What happens after you come up with twelve resolutions during your family’s New Year’s Eve party and shove 12 grapes down your throat? Some of you know what I am talking about. You’re at your aunt’s sala sitting around other family members, waiting for the New Year’s ball to drop.
Then your aunt brings out the grapes in a huge bowl or a few bowls. Big grapes too. You probably don’t have a piece of paper listing your resolutions — (a.k.a. goals), but you come up with a few things you’d like to manifest in the new year.
Twelve resolutions…that you probably don’t remember the next day.
Except, maybe the:
Get in shape one.
Or the:
Do this less one, which sounds like this:
Drink less soda or alcoholic beverages, smoke less or not at all (yeah f$%# right. You’re drinking alcoholic beverages to eat the grapes and you’re loving it).
Yeah, it’s easy to remember those. Sometimes you repeat the same ones every year. I’ve been there.
I don’t know exactly which countries in our Latino cultures do this grape-eating ritual during the new year, but I do know my Dominican culture is one of them. Read on.
The belief is that one grape symbolizes a resolution. Twelve resolutions for the twelve months of the year = Twelve grapes.
I don’t remember one single list of resolutions from my grape-eating days. Do you?
The twelve grapes ritual is not the only method for resolutions/goal setting I’ve resorted to in the past. There was, well, still is –Walter Mercado. Yeah, he’s still around. No really, he is. I recently asked. I could have googled it but I just didn’t have the heart to type it in. You know– Is Walter Mercado still alive? Who asks that? Plus, I didn’t want Google to know I was wondering.
Anyway, maybe you’ve worn red underwear or worn them inside out, or maybe they were yellow. I don’t know; but have you ever tried to walk into a lingerie store and find a yellow piece of anything? It’s like Walter sat there thinking: Hum, let’s see. What is the most difficult color to find? Let me make these b#%$@ work for it.
It depends on your sign and year of course. I think…Maybe not. I have since learned the yellow is for overall good luck. So good luck finding the yellow underwear too! You’re going to need it.
I’m not saying Walter, God bless his soul, suggested those particular things per se; the yellow underwear or the red, but I hope he has because then I would just sound like a weirdo. Or not. Tons of you know the Latino culture will bring out a few extremely weird rituals that we are all too eager to try even if our logic tells us otherwise.
Oh, how I struggled to get Walter’s suggestions right. Don’t come at me. I love Walter Mercado. He’s the cool gay uncle I never had but let’s just think about this for a minute. Let’s stop and get serious. When did the color-wearing suggestions or the grape-eating work for your resolutions?
Are we crazy? Don’t answer that. So what? Fine. We are a little crazy. To think that having twelve grapes or wearing a certain this or that in and of itself will magically make things manifest. How can we think this way? And if you’re thinking: That is really crazy. I never did any of those rituals or believed in them. Well, slow clap for you.
I hope you got a good laugh at my cost and all the poor souls hoping magic and magic alone, brought the prosperity, love & happiness they yearned for into their lives.
Not one single person I had grapes with ever said: Hey you know my grape number 6? The one about making 3k more a month. It happened. Those grapes work! Have you?
Or,
Hey, I found the love of my life this year. It must be because I wore the yellow underwear suggested by Walter Mercado!
In fact, I might have a whole bunch of case studies proving how I should have never worn the inside-out underwear based on the results I got. Let me not even get into it.
I’ll tell you what happened. A hangover happened. New Year, New Me ends there.
Let’s get freakin’ serious.
Let’s make some serious goal-setting plans in 2018. Sign up for my newsletter here and download your free goal-setting worksheets as well as receive the next posts on why how you haven’t missed the goal-setting boat and find out a goal-setting system that works for you.
I just couldn’t find a pair of yellow underwear.
I want you to succeed.