NEW YEAR, NO SOLUTIONS.

At the end of each year, as many of us, I too start making resolutions for the New Year, and as most of us, I don’t keep up with them. After all, I’m only human. A flawed one for that matter, hence the need for resolutions each year to improve myself.

For the last four years, my resolutions have been the same: to lose weight, to exercise and to read more. How do I stand at the moment on these points? For starters, I’m still a lovable bear cub, and not the sexy chaser that I feel inside. Also, although my physical condition is better than other people, it could improve exponentially. That’s why my singing classes did not work as I wanted, I could hold the air for only 30 seconds, tops. Not a good time period, since I was trying to sing Opera. Reading? Let me say that my main source of info has been the internet and yes, not just for porn, even if the song says it so.

Last week I received a call from a friend who works at a newspaper asking me for an interview as a psychologist about New Year’s resolutions and why people don’t stick to them. I had to decline because I’m one semester away from finishing it but nevertheless it made me think about it.

Why do we put ourselves thru this ordeal every year? To begin with, we want to be better than we are right now. Why do we want to better ourselves? This is where the problem starts. Many of us try to improve ourselves in order to receive the acceptance from others that we believe we might get if we change this or that of us. Unfortunately, acceptance from others comes after there is acceptance within ourselves, period. Others will accept us anyway we are just as long as we accept who we are. So, trying to change to please others is the first step to fail.

Let’s go a step further. Ok, let’s say the change is coming from us, not from peer pressure. We have decided that it’s time to let go of bad habits and it’s time to be a better person. So we start doing the resolutions, but before we know it, we’re starting to hide to smoke that craved cigarette, or we find engulfing a whole chocolate bar. What happened there? Many habits and many bad habits are not just that, they are the consequence of things that we, one way or another, haven’t dealt with, and that we are sublimating by doing these things. Each time we get nervous, we smoke to lower the tension. Somebody got mad at us, we eat a chocolate. Somebody rejected us? There’s always retail therapy. No wonder I haven’t kept any of my resolutions.

I’m not saying that in order to keep a resolution, you have to visit your psychologist (although it would be a good thing to do and more business for me). What I’m saying is that many times we sabotage ourselves and feel frustrated because we don’t do want we set out to accomplish, so it’s necessary to take a different and more honest approach to do what we want to do.

It’s not easy to improve ourselves, but it’s not impossible to do so. This year I have decided to take a different approach. I made no resolutions to begin with; I will let each decision and change to arrive when it has to. I feel more comfortable this way and I think it takes a lot of the pressure I always have trying to keep up.