AI Conversations

Gary E. Stevenson (October 2024) provided the inspiration for this resolution.

Chat history

You said:

My New Year’s resolution is to be more of a peacemaker. I think that should work the entire year, and if I temporarily forget, I can just pick up where I left off.

ChatGPT said:

That’s a very strong resolution—precisely because it’s not brittle.

What you described has three qualities that make it unusually likely to succeed:

1. It’s identity-based, not performance-based
   You’re not promising specific outcomes (“resolve conflicts,” “fix people,” “always be calm”). You’re choosing a stance: be a peacemaker. That works in conversations, silence, writing, listening, family, public discourse—everywhere.
2. It has a built-in recovery mechanism “If I temporarily forget, I can just pick up where I left off.”
   That single sentence quietly defeats the biggest resolution-killer: the “I blew it, so it’s over” mindset. Peacemaking isn’t a streak; it’s a direction.
3. It scales across time and intensity
   Being a peacemaker can mean:
   • Saying less, Asking one clarifying question, Refusing to escalate, Giving someone an exit with dignity, Choosing patience internally even if nothing changes externally
   Some days it’s active. Some days it’s simply not adding fuel. Both count.

If you want a very light, optional anchor—nothing rigid—here’s one that fits your framing:

When tension appears, ask:
“What would reduce harm here, even slightly?”

Not solve, not win, not convince. Just reduce harm.

And importantly: peacemaking does not mean avoiding truth, boundaries, or clarity. It means refusing unnecessary damage while those things are expressed.

This isn’t a New Year’s resolution so much as a year-long posture—and honestly, a lifelong one. The fact that you’ve already allowed for forgetting and resuming suggests you’re approaching it with wisdom rather than pressure.

If you ever want, we can also:

• Translate this into a one-sentence personal credo
• Explore what healthy peacemaking looks like vs. self-erasure
• Or reflect at year’s end on how it quietly showed up

For now: that resolution already works.