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It’s Ditch your New Years resolutions day!

Rejoice all you quitters!

Research has shown that January 1 is absolutely NOT the best time to start making changes, and resolutions so firmly set in place on December 31st will already be wavering by January 1 (well, it’s almost still Christmas innit), and by January 17th, we’ve all had enough.

Resolutions suck. It’s official.

I don’t really do resolutions. I do self-improvement type stuff, but it’s more along the lines of “try to be less of a dickhead” than “climb mountains and be a friend to all”. I’ve always found resolutions have been a bit of a fake attempt at trying to be something you’ve no real intention of being anyway. When I was a smoker, my mother in law used to try and coerce me into quitting on new year’s eve. I’d last till about 11am the next day until I was getting ready to head into homicidal territory. What’s the point? That sort of resolution doesn’t benefit you, except for health terms; it benefits the suggest-or though, it helps mould you into something that they want you to be, and as I was never good enough for little Lord Whatshisface, that was the point.

Less of this and more of that

Resolutions about doing less of this and more of that are invariably about depriving us of something or piling on behaviours that are absolutely unnatural to us. Me being nice to my sister in law is never going to happen, for example, there is too much ish between us, so that’s not on my resolution list. Keep on keeping away from her; now that’s definitely made Paula’s top ten this year. Easy easy. Makes life great for everyone. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you.

The New Year is such an arbitrary time to choose to try to be a decent person, don’t you think? If your focus is on you personally, your personal attributes, character, looks,etc, eg; I will get up 15 minutes earlier and get my makeup on and be on time for work every day, no harm in that I guess. I’m pretty sure I’ll have got to about day 10 before I’ve packed that in. Good intentions and all that.

The rest of it though, trying to be an ok human being, do we need to pick a date? And if you pick January 1 are you really going to fail by January 17? Bounce out of bed as the alarm goes off, and that’s it, yay! “I’m going to be a twat to everyone I see today!” I don’t see it working like that.

Resolutions take strength

That’s because resolutions are not that simple. A resolution takes resolve. Strength, backbone, character. Desire for change. Wanting to make things better. Making things better for you, for other people, caring about the world outside your front door, and hopefully a bit further afield.

Quit smoking if that’s your resolution. I did it, I quit with hypnotherapy, and I’ve not had a cigarette in 8 years. And it WILL be better for you. I can vouch for that. But maybe stop thinking of resolutions as these fun little offhand ideas we can have, that it doesn’t really matter if we break.

If you break your promises to yourself, what does that tell you about what you mean to yourself?

What’s your self worth?

Really, think about this? You’ve gotta be worth something to yourself. What do you value? Even at my worst times, I value my sense of humour and my ability to make other people smile.

Start small. Think about your values. What do you mean the most to yourself and the people around you? Start with that, work with that value, and make that a useful and worthwhile point to work on over the year. It doesn’t need to be a resolution. Just a cool thing you can be working on to make every day of the year that little bit better.

Talk to me if you want to find out more about your worth and your values.