People make new resolutions for the new year but it is not really any different from any other day. You wake up and do what you do. If you didn’t do it yesterday then you probably won’t do it today. You should probably make a resolution at a completely different time of year and see if it sticks. What I find works the best is if I want to make a change in my routine, then I make that change and challenge myself for a month or so and see if the habit sticks. If it is a good thing then it will usually take hold and stay with me. But if it is not a good thing, for example, it may not be feasible or too exhausting. You will know soon enough and then you can modify the change. You have to keep your life doable, or manageable.
If you want to lose weight, and many people do, really, then you can’t approach that like a resolution. Weight gain is not a fault or something, it’s a health issue. People feel guilty about their weight as though they did something bad to get it. Like carrying around a bad note. You think you’ll just have to put it down. Quitting smoking can’t be resoluted away either. It comes from a mental capacity and so does weight loss. One has to change their whole understanding about themselves and the health of their body in order to lose weight and stay healthy and also to quit smoking. This is why New Years resolutions don’t work and neither do diets.
One thing that helps is to make a change, any change, for the better at any time. Not on a certain day. It could be on a Tuesday, or a fourteenth or twenty-first, or a month in the middle of the year. You aren’t going to get any attention for it. Anytime you decide to change who you are you are going to go through all the pains of becoming someone else. You can’t resolve to be someone else. You are you and you are the sum of your habits and thoughts. They form you and become you. You can decide that in the new year, I’m going to eat less, quit smoking, write more, keep the house cleaner, lose weight and walk more and be someone I would really like to be. Some one else, not me. Definitely not me. Me is all mixed up and overweight and lazy and tired. And I don’t want to be that someone that I am. But I don’t want to change anything really. I’m not going to get up earlier and walk everyday and do yoga and extras. I just want the personality change without the hard work or the effort. That’s what I want and I’m going to do it on New Years day. That’s when I’m going to start being someone else. I’m not going to change any habits really. I’m just going to claim the fame of change. But no, I’m not giving up anything. I’m going to be me and do everything I already do and eat what I want and tell the world that I have resolutions. I’ll tell you this. If you don’t do it on any other day then why would you do it on the most difficult day of the year.
New Years is one of the most difficult days because you aren’t on schedule. You are tired from staying up past midnight and possibly even hung over. Your house is probably a disaster from the holidays and now you want to start some thing new. Maybe you’ll spend the day moving that tired hung over body around washing dishes and picking up trash if you even manage to get out of bed. You will probably break every resolution before the day is over. So I would suggest that if you want to change something about yourself then you better take one little step at a time and change the thoughts that produced the result that you’re hoping to change.
Maybe unhappy negative thoughts produced a bad feeling about yourself that resulted in negative outcomes. Like being overweight, tiredness or smoking. Maybe these things have gotten the way they are because you talk badly to yourself. You just may want to change that first. Let everything else go for now and start changing the way you think about yourself. Start entertaining hopeful thoughts and positive feelings about you. Take sides against the voice inside of you the pushes you down and condemns you and sneers at you. That voice that negates your feelings. Who knows where that voice came from but it hasn’t helped you be where you want to be in life. No, because now you are at New Years Day and you wish you were different than you are. So just decide today, what ever day it is. To think nice, good, comforting thoughts about yourself. If there is something you really need to change about yourself you will find the courage from a perspective of kindness toward yourself. You will get the strength to make different choices about what you do with your body and what you put in your body when you entertain healing, hopeful and helpful thoughts.
If you can’t manage to change your thoughts then talk to yourself out loud. Talk kindly and comfortingly. Don’t lay expectations and guilt onto yourself and ruin that great opportunity you have to be the best version of yourself. From those thoughts will come all the changes you so greatly desire. But they will come gradually and surely. Your thoughts will be your change. Love your self and you will become lovely.
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