New Year, New You?

Right about week 3 of straight Christmas music, I think I start feeling like this cat a little bit.

Somehow, the barrage of Christmas and holiday music is passing and we are preparing for New Year’s already. I’ve always been of the opinion that holidays are just days on the calendar until we internalize what they mean to us and project that inspiration outward, and the same is true of New Year’s Eve. Everyone celebrates differently, but to me there is something very cool about recognizing the passing of time and appreciating the past as you look forward to the future.

More sparklers!!!

For many people, New Year’s is a time to herald in changes or usher out lifestyles that are no longer helpful. Some of us choose to make resolutions to improve our health or quality of life.

I’ve been pondering lately on this ritual of resolutions, and here’s what I’ve found:

• Many cultures and religious sects have a yearly “reflection” tradition
• The purpose of this tradition falls largely under the category of making an individual promise to perform an act of self-improvement or to do something nice (ie, opening doors for others; forgiving more readily; etc)
• Most participants of this tradition fail

Feeling overwhelmed already?

Yup, you read that right: MOST participants fail to achieve the promises they make at the beginning of the year. I’m talking a whopping 88% of resolution-makers never achieve the goals they set. And only 52% of participants feel confident of success at the time of making the promise**. With odds like these, why the heck do we keep perpetuating this ritual?

There are a lot of factors that we could consider when answering that question, and each variable will carry a different amount of influence for each individual. That being said, the biggest factors tend to come from the powers of social influence, tradition, and guilt.

Socially, it’s largely expected that individuals will make some sort of ‘promise for self-improvement’ and you may feel stigmatized if you decide not to follow that tradition. As a species, we humans do have a tendency to categorize and enjoy the company of those who behave in similar ways to ourselves. If we feel pressured to make a resolution, we’ll likely start pressuring others to do the same without first stopping to analyze why we’re behaving that way in the first place. A perpetuation of social pressures leads to a great number of our cultural behaviors, both good and bad. Suffice it to say that we could all use some introspection on the topic.

Tradition and social influence go hand-in-hand, yet they are somewhat different. Social influence comes from the expectations of others, whereas tradition can come from your expectation for yourself or how things ought to be. If you’ve ALWAYS made a resolution, it will probably feel like something you MUST do, even if you don’t have an inspiration to promise anything. And promises made without a propelling inspiration behind them will almost certainly fail.

Guilt is our last factor, and it’s a doozy. We feel guilty for any number of things in all areas of our lives, even things we shouldn’t feel responsible or guilty for. As a culture, we are incredibly stressed, particularly at this time of year, and our stress levels often compound our guilt further. It’s a vicious circle of negative emotions, and nothing good can come from their volatile combination. Guilt is a useless emotion that weighs us down; consider the difference in these two statements:

“I feel guilty about the decision I made.”

“I am disappointed in the result of my decision.”

One of those statements has the power to change, learn, and grow. One of the statements makes us feel small and ashamed. I’ll let you decide which one is healthier.

So I leave you with this thought as we head toward our various New Year’s Eve celebrations:

The only one who knows what changes your life needs is YOU.

Commercials for weight loss or self-help seminars don’t know you and don’t know what you need. Your friends and family have the best intentions for you, but even they don’t know what you need. You are the only one with the answers, even if you don’t know what they are yet. With some introspection, prayer, meditation, or whatever else works for you, you might just start to figure out what it is you want your life to look like.

(Goal setting)*(Goal achievement strategy)=SUCCESS! The equation is the easy part. The execution of it is up to you.

My follow-up blog will cover some tips for goal-achievement that works for any time of the year to help you be successful! See you next time!

**Reference

A Beautiful Mess

Hello and Happy Holidays! It’s been a while since I’ve posted here (not since Staying Dedicated) as the hubs and I are focusing on the wonders of the holiday season and spending time with family and friends. But the other day I had one of those amazing teaching moments and I feel compelled to share.

We were having breakfast for dinner (one of our family favorites, aka: BRINNER) and I was making my over medium eggs. There’s definitely an art to that whole ‘flip the egg without breaking the yolk’ thing, and it helps when you’ve remembered to put butter in the pan first. Which I did not. And my yolks broke.

Yum yum yum! Photo courtesy of Three Dog Kitchen http://treedogkitchen.com/2011/11/17/land-o-lakes-eggs/

Broken yolks don’t matter that much. I mean, it’s not like I spilled everything on the floor. It was still edible, it just wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what I’d been imagining myself eating. It wasn’t what I was looking forward to enjoying.

I called to the hubs, who was in the other room, lamenting that I’d ruined my brinner (dramatic much?). I was so disappointed in that moment because I knew I wasn’t going to be getting what I wanted. When I type it out like this, it really does sound pretty ridiculous!

But here’s the best part: it was amazing. I mean, absolutely AMAZING just the way it turned out. I was so thrilled with my scrambled eggs on gluten free corn tortillas with fresh tomatoes and black pepper that I forgot about over medium eggs. And I ended up getting a better meal (by adding tortillas and tomatoes) than I would have had otherwise.

This. Is. AMAZING! Photo credits for Eddie Cantor (actor, 1933) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Cantor

I commented to the hubs that I hadn’t ruined it at all, that it had instead turned out better than I had hoped for. This is a super silly example, but it still did a good job at stopping me in my tracks and reminding me about one of my favorite characteristics of life: it always works out!

If I had focused on my disappointment over the eggs not being exactly what I was expecting, I never would have been able to enjoy my meal in the long run. On a grander scale, I can recognize how frequently I stand in my own way like that in life. If the weather is colder than I want it to be, I have a hard time getting over that fact and appreciating the crisp blue sky or the graceful way the naked bones of the trees reach for the clouds.

My little egg disaster was actually a beautiful mess that reminded me to be open to change and flexible in my expectations. It reminded me of a lesson that I’m still working on fully internalizing: just because it’s different doesn’t make it wrong. In a world where we are quick to judge and take an ‘us vs. them’ mentality in our families, our work spaces, and our social lives, we all need to be reminded of this lesson.

Each and every one of us is a beautiful mess. This holiday season, I pray you are able to embrace the crazy with the expected, the perfect with the imperfect, and appreciate it all as part of the mosaic of your life. Even broken yolks can be a blessing to you, if you are willing to let them.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the hubs, the Green Hat, Bosco, and I to you!

Good morning snuggles

Enjoying some exercise on Turkey Day.