UnORTHODOX New Years Resolutions: Anti-Advice To Lose Your Soul In 2025 | STR006 CWP088

This episode delves into the psychology behind New Year's resolutions, exploring the illusions of hope and the harsh reality of broken promises. We discuss the nature of human aspirations, the flaws in self-assessment, and the consequential spiral into despair when resolutions falter.

• Exploration of the emotional high of New Year celebrations 
• Overestimation of capabilities and flawed self-assessment 
• The inevitability of setbacks leading to despair 
• The danger of equating promises with actual accomplishments 
• Encouragement to cultivate a mindset of gradual progress instead

Thank you for journeying w/ the Saints with us!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

My dear Wormwood, I hate to disturb your afternoon tea. Have you been on vacation? The humans have entered into a delightful new year. Entered into a delightful new year, Delightful for them, to be clear. But unless we act quickly and decisive now, the year will be as it just began A deplorable clamor of merrymaking, joy, spiritual enthusiasm and faith-generated hope.

Speaker 2: 0:46

From this point forward, I will motivate myself to hit the treadmills and take the flubber out of my belly. From this point forward, I will not laze about at work staring at my smartphone. From this point forward, I will find that darling of my life whom God has prepared for me my future spouse.

Speaker 1: 1:11

So bloody on and so bloody forth. Ha ha, ha, ha ha ha. Do you see the hilarity of these patterns yet Doubt you can. One moment, after a jolly good party and feast, or after a swell night's beauty sleep and a swill of strong caffeine, the humans will feel themselves a rush of exhilaration. Feel themselves a rush of exhilaration and at the pitch of their joy, every sort of bold and happily made resolution will be bursting out of their lips like a hail of confetti bursting out of a twist popper.

Speaker 1: 2:01

And in the midst of this ecstatic elation, they feel themselves no, they think themselves capable of keeping it up for a very long time, as the recklessness of youth is deceived into thinking himself immortal and ensured to last an eternity. The blind fervor of an excitement stoked by novelty and clean-slated new beginnings is duped into the belief that the fervor of such resolutions will remain as strong tomorrow as it is today. My advice in this regard will ever remain the same as it has been all these years. Make use of their eventual and inevitable exhaustion and their loss of enthusiasm after such resolutions are made. Bring them to a deluded despair, for these fools have lit themselves but a dim and fleeting candle the length of two little fingers and believe that the fire upon the wick shall be as hotly intense and lasting as the blistering sun in the sky.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Make them think themselves perfect enough, virtuous enough to maintain the integrity of their firmly made resolutions and the consistency of their future efforts. Make them judge their own character so positively ahead of time, before such resolutions are truly tested, and imagine they have accomplished everything beforehand. A delicious manifestation of vainglorious self-estimation. This is the way of a veteran tempter. Eons of our diabolical efforts have successfully deluded the harebrained human race that their mere resolutions imagining to do a thing, actually amounts to having accomplished the thing itself. This is the domain of our more effective subversions, my dear Wormwood the realm of the purely imaginary and the unrealized. That thing always put off to be done tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 5:26

I will give the devil today and give God tomorrow, tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Be sure to couple this with the untamed passions Such is our weapon waged even against the most sacred and solemn vows and promises made in the sacrament of holy baptism. It matters not how contemptuously they spit upon our fell father and how determinedly they promise to renounce his works and all his pomps At that time. They are only promises, easily left behind. Without a true and determined exercise of the will, they are all but useless and harmless against the advancements of the Infernal Empire. If you desire a rapid and assured surrender to despair, invite them to promise, mind you, endless labors and to pray unceasingly until finally the mountain which they have set out to climb becomes an impossible feat.

Speaker 1: 7:08

I promise you, wormwood, they will be Of January. Make them feel accomplished and complete when all they've done is make a promise. And Wormwood and wormwood. You will refrain from any more of your flowery, long-winded, waxing, poetic and foolish resolutions to bring ruin upon the world and to make me proud, or what have you? I have no need for empty assurances, only results. Bring them to me. My next resolution shall be to torment you all the more terribly throughout this whole new year, your eternally unaffectionate uncle.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Screwtape.