Staring into the Sun: Resistance and Resolutions

When I took the leap of faith with this project, my mission was simple. Share my story and experiences with people who, like me, experienced friction, contradiction, or turmoil with money. What I found were folks who either openly acknowledged tension with their money stories, or secretly held it close to their chest. The results have been overwhelming, which led me to this:

Wealth is a fulcrum, where possibility constantly dances with reality, and where resources, when aligned with embodied action, leverage outcomes in our favor.

As I embark on 2025, I’m struck by the role that resolutions play in our money stories. From the wealthy to the impoverished and from the planner to the doer, incorporating resolutions into a strategy appears to be non-negotiable.

Yes. The solo entrepreneur who multiplied his wealth 20 X needs different resolutions than the engineer earning $130,000 with $45,000 in student loans and a mortgage. But they exist, nevertheless. And I’m starting to understand why.

For starters, the word resolution is a strong noun with no equal synonym, and the use case is very long. The Resolution of Independence. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The United Nations Resolutions. Newton’s Resolution of Light. Kant’s Resolution of the Antinomies. The Seneca Falls Resolution. The Missouri Compromise Resolution. The Resolutions of Diet of Worms.

These legislative, scientific, and diplomatic cases demonstrate how resolution captures the singular essence of a plurality of actions, such as intention, resolve, decision, intent, aim, aspiration, design, purpose, commitment, pledge, promise, or undertaking.

In other words, we use resolutions to do a certain something or not do something. But what about personal applications and money stories?

Resolutions occupy a niche role, that when aligned with financial purpose and financial values, can differentiate a successful strategy from a failed plan. I often refer to financial resolutions as the fuel for financial fortitude.

Step 1: Finding Alignment

Like any strategy, we must first identify where we are right now. Then, with some honesty about our shortcomings and weaknesses, and some humility of our strengths and advantages, we can plot a plan for a future somewhere. All in all, asking the right, but hard questions, will determine what resolutions we incorporate to possibly become our best selves and get to where we are going.

It makes sense to start with elementary questions: Should I restrict myself to a tight, monetary diet to achieve a healthier debt-to-income ratio? Should I allocate more to a retirement plan because “setting it and forgetting it” just works better? Should I restrict myself to reviewing my portfolio twice a year in an effort to keep the emotional wolves at bay? Should I tell myself “No” more often than “Yes”, just because?

These are healthy fact-finding prompts, and it can feel like an exercise in futility at first, but the average results from asking the mechanical questions eventually funnel down to this:

1. What resolutions would help you redefine your goals and which ones might help materialize them?
2. What resolutions call for increased activity, and which ones challenge you to forfeit something?

Step 2: Naming the Resistance

When it comes to investing over the long run, there are too many resources grabbing your attention with promises that if you adopt certain resolutions for your financial plan, you will be better off in 30 years. This may be true, but they sometimes fail to meet people where they are right now, which is often uncertain, uneducated, unprepared, and unwilling.

If you need a list of resolutions to adopt, I recommend staring into the sun- not at your gains or losses, but at yourself. Most folks understand the resolutions they should adopt from a philosophical perspective. They just struggle to put them into action because of certain psychological factors that are working equally hard against them.

What are you not doing because it feels impossible? What are you not doing because guilt overrides true responsibility? What are you not doing because instant gratification wins over long-term possibility? Usually, the answer is on the opposite side of the resistance we face.

I like what Steven Pressfield says about resistance.

The greater the Resistance we find ourselves experiencing, the bigger the dream percolating inside us. Resistance operates like Newton’s Third Law of Motion. For every action (our Dream), there is an equal and opposite Reaction (Resistance). Big Resistance = Big Dream.

Name your resistance. Find your resolution. Chase your dream.