Each New Year, people express their determination to drop unhelpful habits. While it generally proves easier to state the intent than to keep the resolution, the tradition points to both a widespread yearning to better ourselves and the conviction that it’s possible. 

I share that conviction. But over many years, I’ve found that betterment comes less from noting human imperfections and striving to change them than from discerning a deeper perfection that actually defines us. Christian Science reveals that we are related to divine Love, God, as the very expression of Love’s perfection. 

Grasping this doesn’t negate the need for our honest self-awareness but enhances its precision. Knowing what we truly are brings into sharp relief traits that don’t belong to that selfhood, impelling in turn our desire to relinquish those traits.