51 weeks to go!

51 weeks to go!

Anyone you know who on the 31^st of December, didn’t want better 365 days ahead?

People look for rejuvenation, reenergization, reinvigoration and everything else positive and noble in the last few hours of a year and in a fit of passion for renewal of life, make a resolution that when the new dawn breaks, they would emerge (or try to) a better specimen of whatever kind they have been so far.

According to Cambridge dictionary, a new year resolution is a promise that you make to yourself to start doing something good or stop doing something bad on the first day of the year.

You lived your life till December last year but wanted to turn a new leaf last week. Did you promise to be a better person/spouse/parent/child/professional etc.?

Did you resolve to learn Zumba/ grammar/rug-making/mountain-biking/French cuisine in 2023?

Maybe you pledged to give up junk food, smoking, drinking, gambling, wasting time, complaining, worrying, bad company, giving unsolicited advice?

Perhaps you vowed to reach up to the highest rung of ladder at your workplace, eat healthy, lose weight or exercise, smile more often!

Babylonians, it is said, promised their gods that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts this day. Is that on your agenda, by any chance?

Congratulations! If you made a new year resolution, you have participated in a process started a few centuries ago. merriam-webster.com claims a 1671 entry from the diaries of Anne Halkett, a writer and member of the Scottish gentry, contains a number of pledges, typically taken from biblical verses such as “I will not offend any more”. Halkett titled this page ‘Resolutions’, and wrote them on January 2^nd, which would possibly indicate that the practice was in use at the time, even if people did not refer to it as a New Year’s resolution.

Why new year? An American Medical Association study found that 46% of participants who made common New Year's resolutions were likely to succeed, over ten times as among those deciding to make life changes some other times in a year. 

Before deciding on my own promise for this year, I sought advice from Google baba.

Psychiatrist and author Dr Michael Bennett’s believes, “…if you build up a process where you’re thinking harder about what’s good for you, you’re changing the structure of your life, you’re bringing people into your life who will reinforce that resolution, then I think you have a fighting chance.” 

I am still not sure if sharing this with Mani was wise. He said I had too many bad habits to give up and a lot to improve.

“Making a concrete goal is really important rather than just vaguely saying, ‘I want to lose weight.’ You want to have a goal: How much weight do you want to lose and at what time interval?” Katherine L. Milkman, associate professor, operations information and decisions, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, said “Five pounds in the next two months — that’s going to be more effective.”

Going by that, if you ask me a question before Mani exhausts my quota of not-putting-my-foot-in-my-mouth twice per day limit and I stare back dumbly, it means I have the honest answer/opinion but it comes in the purview of breaking my resolution. 

Another one said - take small steps. Too big a step too fast can cause frustration, or affect other areas of your life to the point that your resolution takes over your life.  

I took encouragement from the words of Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, “Focus on these small wins so you can make gradual progress…if you’re building a habit, you’re planning for the next decade, not the next couple of months.”

“You want to stop biting your nails, take pictures of your nails over time so you can track your progress in how those nails grow back out,” says Jeffrey Gardere, a psychologist and professor at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. Logging progress into a journal or making notes on your phone helps you track behaviors which can reinforce the progress.

I have noted on two dozen pages in the first week, my phone memory is full. If this continues, I would be in a soup. People are visibly annoyed when I try to take their photo after I have spoken or done something. Besides, recording all those self-improvement efforts leaves me with very little time and energy for the things that need to be done.

What can I say about attempts at healthy and worthwhile promise to exercise? It is too cold to go out, the roads are crowded, the park is too small and that half-finished cardigan is not going to knit itself. 

I took heart from the gyan that bad habits are impossible to break if we try to break them all at once. Choose one to change; now I understood that. You cannot resolve to lose weight and cook elaborate meals for others, give up drinking and be patient with people, be truthful as well as politically correct, keep a picture-perfect house and let your family be themselves at home. (Can I ask others to go live someplace else to keep the house clean and tidy?)

The one I liked best was by the psychologist and author of Taming Your Inner Brat, Pauline Wallin, “Any resolution plan should include room for mistakes. You’re there for the long haul. You have to expect slip ups…There will be times when you will say…I’m just going to start again tomorrow.”

Making a resolution is like making a list for me. Even if I donot do anything on it, I am clear what needs to be done. I still have 51 weeks to work on the dozens of promises I made and do not need a mental breakdown struggling to stick to some unrealistic idea I had in mind for a few weak moments last year-end. One encouraging thought is if the creator wanted me to be any different, He/She would have done so in the first place.

It is already the seventh day of the new year today. Has the tiny bud of your promise to yourself survived?

Thank God, at the end of 2023 most of us would be the same old persons that we were in 2022.; we would not modify and improve like the new versions of most devices which we do not know how to operate any more.

So go ahead, break the resolution, and enjoy being you. Or, make it again tomorrow, day after tomorrow, the following day…you have 358 days.                                                                                                                                                                                                          -Anupama S Mani