New Year’s Resolutions? Be Kind to Yourself!

Happy New Year! Albeit a bit belatedly…

I just looked at the date of my last post and, gosh, how embarrassing! I didn’t realize how long it’s been.

I meant to write a whole bunch of New Year’s posts, and now we’re halfway through January already.

Which brings me to New Year’s Resolutions…

Here’s the problem:

If we make resolutions and then break them, what does that do to our inner self, higher self, subconscious mind, or whatever you call that part of you that guides you along as you move forward in your journey.

If we keep making promises that we don’t keep, it will start having very low expectations. When we disappoint our own deepest self, we set ourselves up for continued disappointment and failure.

So what to do about that?

Stop making resolutions? Maybe.

Approach them a bit differently? Definitely.

There are two elements that are really crucial when it comes to those resolutions:

1) Do we REALLY want what we claim we want?

I mean, do we want it badly enough to really commit to paying the price it costs on a continuing basis?

If the answer is “No” it’s not a good idea to resolve that.

Now this does not mean we don’t WANT this, but it means that maybe our lives are too full of other commitments already that we simply don’thave the energy to do what we tried to wrestle ourselves into doing.

2) We are committing ourselves to doing too much

That’s the second problem. And it goes along with part of the previous section.

There are two ways in which we can go wrong here:

a) We commit to goals over which we have little control.

Let’s talk about weight loss or blood pressure or whatever. If we commit to certain weight loss goals or blood pressure readings, we may throw in the towel quickly because subconsciously we know that these are things we don’t really have full control over.

Sure, the old rules about goals being measurable and all make that seem like a good idea, but the thing is we don’t have control over outcomes.

For example, you try to get a job by February 1. It’s your New Year’s resolution. Maybe you make it, but maybe you won’t. You don’t have complete control over the outcome. You DO have control over which interviews you go to and how many (to a point), and how many applications you send out, and so on.

Ditto for weight loss. You have control over what you put into your mouth and what you do in terms of exercise and other helpful things.

b) We commit to doing too much

I just had a very interesting experience here…

The Example of Kevin Riley’s Natural Blood Pressure Lowering Program

I was reading Kevin Riley’s excellent program on how to reduce your blood pressure naturally, and immediately, I thought, I can do this faster and better.

Well, not exactly.

Here’s how his program works.

It’s a 12 week program called “Get Natural” and each week he gives you an assignment of approximately three things you are supposed to do (and keep doing) so the cumulative effect of them all will leave you with a much improved blood pressure picture by the end of the 12 weeks, and probably much sooner than that.

His first week’s assignment?

Drink water (I forgot how many glasses, but two of them you should drink before you ingest anything else in the morning), cut down on coffee to 1-2 cups a day (or at least less than you started with) and add herb tea and green tea.

Not too tough, right?

Well, I am now drinking more water, and added more tea, and I’m still drinking coffee, but much less. In fact, today, I only had two cups, though those cups admittedly were about three times the size of the kinds of cups Kevin probably had in mind.

Still, that’s good. I also tried to incorporate a bunch of things from later sections, but guess what! They didn’t stick.

See the principle?

So what’s the lesson?

Keep things realistic. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, considering what else you already have on your plate.

And so that accounts for my lack of posts recently. I’ll resolve to improve, but no, I’m not committing to daily posts. Maybe a couple a week. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, go over your New Year’s resolutions and think about where you may have been overshooting the target.

And resolve to be gentle with yourself…

One of my favorite reminders of that is that little bit in airline preparatory drills where they say to put on your oxygen mask first before you put on anyone else’s. It’s not a prescription for selfishness, but a reminder that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re little use to anyone else — OR ourselves.

So be good to yourself, and have a fabulous year.

Elisabeth

make money in your jammies

3 thoughts on “New Year’s Resolutions? Be Kind to Yourself!

  1. Brian

    I will have to take a look at Kevins program as I suffer from HB (I drink lots of tea tho) Maybe my new years resolution should have been “drink more water!”
    A nice post Elisabeth I must come here more often (another resolution? lol)
    Keep it up
    Brian

  2. Nicole Bechi

    Elisabeth I really enjoyed this post. I agree with a lot of what you say on this post. I really like the ending where you say if you do not take care of yourself you are no good to anyone else and yourself. That is so very true thanks for sharing.

  3. Pingback: Thoughts about New Year’s Resolutions » Favorite Self-Help Stuff

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