Resolutions need resolve.
I am on the whole anti-New Years resolutions. As are most psychologists in the know. Artificial deadlines to start or stop doing something suggest that deep down we do not want to effect this change. And if deep down we do not want to do stuff, then maybe we should examine why we think we on top.
Trinny and Susannah, top comedy fashionistas, entitled their TV Cash-In Book What You Wear Can Change Your Life last year. “Doctor” Gillian McKeith’s You Are What You Eat posits the idea that changing our diet will improve your faeces and therefore your life. And of course even though she is not a real doctor, and Trinny & Susannah are just the noughties version of Morcambe and Wise, they are both right. And if you want to change your life, because you are unhappy, or unhealthy, why wait until New Year? Why wait until it is cold, you have no money and are miserable about going back to work?
The answer? The real reason people make New Years resolutions? So they can break them. I can happily ascribe the slight down feeling I currently have to this resolution. It won’t be being back at work, it won’t be having to write two or three policy documents in two days in a freezing cold office when two days ago I could sleep in until twelve. Merely breaking that resolution will remind me of the happy, farting days before New Year, when I was bold, brave and most probably drunk. Resolutions need resolve, but then sometimes so do hangovers.
(Other proprietary hangover treatments are available).