Resolutions

It's a little more than a week into 2014. It's the wondrous time of year when all anyone will talk about is the weather and their New Year's Resolutions. Cooking shows pander to those with weight loss resolutions by offering low fat and low calorie recipes. People flood social media sites with talk of both breaking their resolutions and progress. You've probably gathered by now that my view of New Year's Resolutions is less than stunningly positive. I don't have any sort of real problem with them. They genuinely help some people to live happier, healthier lives. I just think that it also sets others up for disappointment. Let's take weight loss as a handy example, as it is one of the most common resolutions.

You can lose weight at any time of the year. If you really want to be healthy and/or lose weight you probably can! However, there are still the people who take the New Year part of the resolution a bit too seriously. They take it as a license to eat as much or as poorly as they want right before the year ends, then scramble to drastically change habits on the first. The year is an arbitrary human construction anyhow. Yes, the Earth makes a full revolution, but the new year could be any year. If you started counting right now, in a year it would be a "new year"- but I digress.  Maybe drastic change works for other people (though I've not heard that) but it definitely doesn't work for me. Gradual change and awareness goes farther in the long term. 

I think another cause of resolution failure is expectation. People expect too much too soon. Weight is not put on in a few days, so it's unrealistic to expect it to be gone in a few days. They don't see the results they want right away, get discouraged, break their resolutions, and eventually give up. Notice that you don't generally hear people talking about their resolutions in, say, July. My assumption is that most of the drastic resolution makers give up, and the more gradual ones have assimilated to their healthier lifestyles by then. 

So did I have a New Year's Resolution? In a way, yes. It's not new and it's more of a reminder than a resolution. It was to be happy. It's harder than it sounds sometimes but I don't need drastic change to do it. All I need to do is listen to myself and hopefully the rest will follow. I do hope that everyone else can stick with their resolutions and also be happy. I can feel that it's going to be a good year.