So, a new year is upon us an I think that around this time every year we all take stock of our lives, have a good hard think and decide what it is about our lives we want to change, to improve. Normally, in popular culture, this would be called making a New Years Resolution, but I don't believe it has to be that final and abrupt.
For example, a few years ago at a new years party I was having with some friends and amid the drunken singing and jokes, me and a friend were having a discussion about new years resolutions. The general idea of the conversation was that as a concept, new years resolutions (NYR) are a great idea, but in reality are not so great and I believe I know why.
Typically, many people make sweeping statements about grand and life altering changes they're going to make to their day to day life to better themselves such as lose a bunch of weight, go to the gym four times a week, write a novel, travel the world, well you get the idea. However, the immediate problem I see with these kind of statements is that they are too big and people get bogged down by disappointment very quickly when desired effects don't have almost instantly.
Now many people know that losing a bunch of weight doesn't happen over night, if it did I'd have a six pack, and traveling the world isn't something you can just do on a whim but it seems to me people don't look at NYR logically when they make their sweeping statements. I mean, the way I look at it is that if someone wanted to travel the world, they surely would've done something about it if they could? Now when I say people don't look at them logically is that, for example, traveling the world is firstly, very costly, extremely time consuming and also very demanding. Now factor that in to someone's day to day life and it suddenly borders on impossible.
For someone just starting out in their career or a parent or even someone with a long time job, having the available time to simply stop your normal life and travel the world, either in one large stint or in installments, is not something that can be done well. People usually get allotted time off work every year and so typically either go on small vacations or spend time with their family, but this doesn't really allow for world travel.
However, if thought about logically, a reasonable NYR could have been, this year I want to travel to X country, an thus make a declaration that every year you will visit a different country every year.
Now obviously I am by no means claiming I have NYR perfected as I have failed myself at many of them in the past, but over the last few years I have found myself actually thinking about what to change in my life and to make it realistic. I know I'm not going to stop world hunger single-handedly or have a body like Brad Pitt in a few months but I can take a realistic look at my life and make small changes to improve my life in small doses.
For example, last year I had a long hard think about my life and decided that I needed to drink more water, and to tidy up after myself and to be perfectly honest, I managed to improve on both. I'm not saying i'm tidy one hundred percent of the time, but definitely more than I used to be, and that's really the whole point behind it. High expectations result in high disappointment.
This year, after much consideration I have decided that I want to improve on my writing. I want to blog more as I only recently got into it and I want to put more effort into my novel. Now this isn't to say I will be a world class blogger and novelist by this time next year and expectations like that are just plain silly, but I know I will definitely improve because it's something I've wanted to do for a while.
Finally, as a last thought before I leave you to it, I can't help but question why it is we need to wait for the start of a new year to make a life changing resolution and it's something I want to change for myself, if I want to make a change to my life I'm not going to wait for some big event to make that change, I'm just going to change it there and then.
Anyway, that's enough from me, let me know what your thoughts are on the subject and your ideas for NYR, I'd love to know what you think.

RE