10 Tips for New Year's Resolutions
Okay, so it's a day late. Yesterday I slept, catching up for 2010 and all the overexertions of the past season. I did some incredible things in October, November and December. Most of all I survived a worse fall and winter than 2009 was, in a climate that's not good to me around this time of year. But here's something I wrote in a long comment on a message board last year about New Year's Resolutions. I decided it was worth reposting:
Here's a short list of suggestions for people who really don’t want to just say “My New Year’s Resolution is not to make any New Year’s Resolutions” - which I did in 2009 and stuck to, since I *did* have to explain it to everyone who asked.
So here are my ten suggestions:
1) Eat more chocolate. (Some of y’all have trouble having any appetite or forcing yourselves to eat. Others are anorexic. Think about it. Also, chocolate is calming and may be good for stress management.)
2) Spend more time playing computer games. (Especially if you spend a lot of time worrying and getting chronic disease flares from stress.)
3) Exercise less. (I was, for many years, prone to TRYING to exercise and destroying my back while using up what little body energy I have and not being able to say, brush my teeth because I did the dang calisthenics. Not to mention the pain.)
4. Avoid one specific health food. List one that disagrees with you and/or you intensely dislike. Life’s too short to force it down your throat when vitamins come in pills and tastier things have that nutrient. This year it's Brown Rice, which doesn't taste right and wrecks my digestion. I tried it for months on end but instead of my body getting used to it, I had more digestive problems as time went on.
5. Give up liver. Okay, so this is a real no-effort one since I have never willingly bought liver as an adult or eaten it. I never starved that much in a circumstance where that was the only food available.
6. Complain more. Again, something I could have done and *learned from* since I am usually the strong silent macho type that doesn’t admit it hurts till I keel over.
7. Give up trying to find A Job. A vital Resolution for anyone with chronic disease who could be better off self employed at something they can do at home on much more flexible time. I made this one back in 1990 and never regretted it even though I fell off the wagon a couple of times.
8. Get rid of the alarm clock and sleep in. Useful for those of us Night Owls who have been wasting the best part of our nights trying to sleep because the majority want you to live by a different clock.
9. Clean up less often. If you drive yourself into the ground trying to do home maintenance, use this resolution to streamline it. Cut back on things that take more work and give yourself more time to live once it’s clean.
10) Stop measuring my achievements by what other people do and measure them only against myself. This one is the deepest, healthiest one of the lot. This is the one that makes the others make sense. I’m still honestly proud of 2008 as the year that I got my own coffee all year without needing to ask for someone to bring it to me.
Basically, look at your life for what it really is, then pick a resolution that will shock everyone and make them laugh. Give up something you hate anyway or add something new to your life that most of those couch potatoes would give their eye teeth for.
I’ll finish on my favorite Christopher Titus quote. “I want to hear your pain. I care. I really do. I just want to hear it in joke form.”
Do that to your New Year's Resolutions, bring down the house laughing - and your goal might actually improve your life. Better that than just beating yourself up anytime you enjoy life.
Here's a short list of suggestions for people who really don’t want to just say “My New Year’s Resolution is not to make any New Year’s Resolutions” - which I did in 2009 and stuck to, since I *did* have to explain it to everyone who asked.
So here are my ten suggestions:
1) Eat more chocolate. (Some of y’all have trouble having any appetite or forcing yourselves to eat. Others are anorexic. Think about it. Also, chocolate is calming and may be good for stress management.)
2) Spend more time playing computer games. (Especially if you spend a lot of time worrying and getting chronic disease flares from stress.)
3) Exercise less. (I was, for many years, prone to TRYING to exercise and destroying my back while using up what little body energy I have and not being able to say, brush my teeth because I did the dang calisthenics. Not to mention the pain.)
4. Avoid one specific health food. List one that disagrees with you and/or you intensely dislike. Life’s too short to force it down your throat when vitamins come in pills and tastier things have that nutrient. This year it's Brown Rice, which doesn't taste right and wrecks my digestion. I tried it for months on end but instead of my body getting used to it, I had more digestive problems as time went on.
5. Give up liver. Okay, so this is a real no-effort one since I have never willingly bought liver as an adult or eaten it. I never starved that much in a circumstance where that was the only food available.
6. Complain more. Again, something I could have done and *learned from* since I am usually the strong silent macho type that doesn’t admit it hurts till I keel over.
7. Give up trying to find A Job. A vital Resolution for anyone with chronic disease who could be better off self employed at something they can do at home on much more flexible time. I made this one back in 1990 and never regretted it even though I fell off the wagon a couple of times.
8. Get rid of the alarm clock and sleep in. Useful for those of us Night Owls who have been wasting the best part of our nights trying to sleep because the majority want you to live by a different clock.
9. Clean up less often. If you drive yourself into the ground trying to do home maintenance, use this resolution to streamline it. Cut back on things that take more work and give yourself more time to live once it’s clean.
10) Stop measuring my achievements by what other people do and measure them only against myself. This one is the deepest, healthiest one of the lot. This is the one that makes the others make sense. I’m still honestly proud of 2008 as the year that I got my own coffee all year without needing to ask for someone to bring it to me.
Basically, look at your life for what it really is, then pick a resolution that will shock everyone and make them laugh. Give up something you hate anyway or add something new to your life that most of those couch potatoes would give their eye teeth for.
I’ll finish on my favorite Christopher Titus quote. “I want to hear your pain. I care. I really do. I just want to hear it in joke form.”
Do that to your New Year's Resolutions, bring down the house laughing - and your goal might actually improve your life. Better that than just beating yourself up anytime you enjoy life.