My Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions are Amaze-balls.
Ok, New Year Resolution number one. Never use the term Amaze-balls again!
So I was reading the incredible Laura Try’s blog from last week about how New Year’s Resolutions are basically for sappy useless buggers who need to wait til 1st January to make a positive improvement in their lives.
Now normally I agree whole heartedly with LT about a lot of her posts. Her blog on loneliness in particular is extremely impactful.
However, on the case of the New Year’s Resolution I think she’s got it more wrong than those weird people who think that a dog licking their face is cute.
It’s not cute by the way. It’s disgusting. I’ve just watched him eat his own faeces and lick his balls. If you want that sort of thing spread all over your face then you are one sick puppy!
Anyway, I personally think the tradition of the New Year’s Resolution is the dog’s bollocks, to use an appropriate colloquialism. New Year is fast becoming my 3rd favourite holiday (after Christmas and Halloween. I love dressing up and scary the local kids. Actually, maybe I’m the sicko!). I don’t love New Year’s for the fireworks, the drinking, the parties or even because it’s the one night of the year we can stay up until midnight and not feel guilty.
In fact, New Year’s Eve this year involved forcing ourselves to stay up ‘til 12, drinking an obligatory glass of stale champagne in front of the fireworks on TV and then going to bed. I think it was 12.05am when my head hit the pillow.
No. New Year’s Eve is shit.
New Year’s Day, on the other hand, is fantastic.
It’s a day of new beginnings. New hopes and dreams. A whole year of unknown excitement spread out before me like a red carpet. Actually, it’s more like lots of red carpets and I can choose which carpet to follow based on my life choices.
I absolutely LOVE New Year’s Day!
LT’s main argument for New Year’s Resolutions being a load of tosh was based around the fact that most people don’t complete them.
While I can’t argue with that fact, it doesn’t mean that New Year’s Resolutions themselves are bad. It just means people make the wrong ones or people are just as weak-willed as a cake-aholic in a Patisserie Valerie.
The point of a New Year’s Resolution is that it lasts a whole YEAR. The clue’s in the name. What most people do is create a New Year’s Resolution and then only envisage themselves completing it up to Feb. It’s no surprise then that one month later they're back on the booze and fags, NYR in tatters and soon forgotten. If you created a New Year’s Resolution and you imagined yourself breaking the resolution on 1st January the following year, you're more likely to complete the whole year.
People also create ridiculously unachievable resolutions, like ‘I want to run every day’. Or non-specific resolutions like ‘I want to lose weight’. If you make a realistic Resolution and are absolutely clear on what consitutes success and what constitutes failure then you’re much more likely to stick to it, purely because you know what it is that you are sticking to.
Also, hand-in-hand with the 'success or failure' theme, is another place where lots of people fall down. If you promise to never eat biscuits and then on the 15th Jan you scoff a hobnob, that doesn’t mean that you have failed the Resolution. It just means that you have had an off day. Don’t do what most people do and think ‘bugger the bloody Resolution’ before devouring their body weight in McVities biscuits.
It’s ok to have an off day.
An Olympic athlete might not perform to the best of their ability on one or two of their training sessions. It doesn’t mean they give up their dream of an Olympic Gold Medal to sit on the sofa watching 'Loose Women' and eating pork pies.
As long as you don’t have 365 off days!
If, for example, you say ‘I want to lose a stone’ then, with the right framework, you will complete your Resolution. You’ve got 1 year to achieve your goal.
And that’s the key. You have a whole year to achieve your target, so if you cock up in January, you still have 11 months to put it right.
So, I agree in part with LT who questioned whether you needed to wait until Big Ben finished chiming to start making positive steps in your life, but I also think that New Year’s Resolutions can have a MASSIVE impact on your plans for year IF you create the Resolution in the right way and follow through with the will-power of a Catholic Priest.
One of the good ones, not those ones you hear about on the news.
New Year's Resolutions are brilliant and it doesn't matter if you make a mistake every once in a while. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that New Year's Resolutions are Amaze-balls!
(Ah bollocks!)