The Most Pointless New Year’s Resolution of 2012
Want to know what it is? ALL of them!
If Planet Earth received a penny for every broken New Year’s Resolution… We’d probably still be in debt. But at least we’d have some guaranteed growth forecast for the future.
As 2012 begins, there are two things we can take for granted:
1. The world is not going to end.
2. Millions of New Year’s Resolutions will be born, briefly adored, and then aborted faster than a back-alley Catholic love child.
What is it about January 1st that inspires us to scream “Yes, I Can!” to personal change? And why is it that we fail so spectacularly before we’ve seen the arse-end of January 4th?
There are 365 days in a year. That’s 365 opportunities to set achievable targets – even more if you dissect a day in to segments, less the meaningless slog. You could be forgiven for suspecting that most people allow 364 of those opportunities to go to waste.
Why? Is there something special about January 1st? Why does it make personal reinvention so much easier to grasp?
I sigh with every mention of the dreaded New Year’s Resolution, and you just know there’s going to be plenty as every bell-end with a blog announces his intention to the world in the next week – almost as many as the equally irritating Top Ten [x] of 2011 posts.
My cynicism is born out of never actually seeing a resolution brought to life – not by myself, my family or my friends. Certainly not by those who have been brash enough to rub them in other people’s faces on December 31st.
“Here’s what I’m going to do… I’m so proud of myself for making this decision… I’m a different person… Oh, you haven’t set a New Year’s Resolution? Are you, like, depressed or something?”
Achieving a New Year’s Resolution vs. Winning The Lottery
I see January 1st as a great day to review progress and targets we’ve ticked off in the previous calendar year. But in terms of goal-setting, it’s no more productive than the next day. That’s because true change is born out of true motivation.
For example:
You finally reach breaking point, unable to stare at the blubbering mass in the mirror, therefore you decide to lose weight.
You receive bad news from a doctor. If you don’t quit drinking, your pickled liver is going to lead you to certain death.
Your relationship shatters, the friends you’ve abandoned are no longer there to place a hand on your shoulder. You dive tits first in to your work, hoping it will heal the wounds and relaunch your career. (I have personal memories of this one)
In each case, the cause of the pain becomes so great that change is seen as the lesser of two evils. This is how our brains work. We are, after all, fickle creatures who find no greater challenge than breaking the patterns and habits we’ve become accustomed to.
New Year’s Resolutions rarely work because they fail to acknowledge that creating change requires a firm belief that to not change would be so much worse. They are backed by optimistic hope, much the same sensation that we feel when we buy a lottery ticket.
I mean, seriously, one of the top ten New Year’s Resolutions is to ‘enjoy life more’. It amuses me to imagine how anybody could seize the day and make that dream come true without an urge much greater than 3 ambiguous words on a page. In most cases, there isn’t even a plan. It’s bloody whimsical at best…
When the masses sit down to think of what they’d like to do in 2012, it’s a battle of wants over needs. Well, sure, we’d all love to have perfect bodies for the beach. We’d all love to double our income. And we’d all love to be loved. But if you can’t attribute those desires to a burning need – the refusal to settle for more of the same – January 1st cannot help you.
Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Future
The upside to this depressing tale is that while your New Year’s Resolution may be no more than a public display of vanity, there are 364 more opportunities to set the wheels of change in motion. It’s easy to say though, right? Taking action is a different animal altogether.
How can you convince yourself that you don’t love chocolate? That you don’t enjoy the first sip of a stiff Vodka after work? That you don’t enjoy every second of your four hours vegetating in front of the television?
No matter what you wish to achieve, the first step is to believe in the consequences. It requires a proactive attitude and the ability to understand how your brain works.
If you want to quit chocolate, go and spend a few hours researching the ingredients stuffed in to your favourite candy bar. Visualise the toxic crap that’s being funneled in to your stomach, and imagine yourself 20 years from now; a rousing victim of gluttony, wasted, out of shape.
If you want to quit drinking, force yourself to imagine that early grave every time a gaze fixes on the bottle. Spend an hour reading stories of alcohol fueled domestic abuse, then roll a tape in your head of the same abuse being inflicted on your loved ones.
It’s only through this association of strong vivid imagery that we can break the patterns and routines of our ways.
And that’s why January 1st absolutely sucks as a catalyst for change. It’s likely that if you’re setting targets on the first day of the year, they aren’t driven by the kind of motivation that is necessary to honour them. Instead, they are born out of novelty. Novelty and the need to follow the crowd.
A new year promises a new start. We should be happy about that. But let’s not fool ourselves in to thinking that a new start is possible without newfound conviction. It’ll take more than a fresh calendar to bless us with such a priceless thing.
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