NEW YEAR'S RESOLVE

What to give up in 2008?  There’s the latte, the Fratelli olive bread, the Ronson shoes, and the constant acquisition of Opera CD’s and additions to my vinyl collection of Maria Callas recordings. Every year we decide we will do something groundbreaking to change our lives a little. Each year I keep my word to myself, and you keep yours. Change can be stick-handled in two ways. You can let the inevitable clobber you, or take a stand for incremental planning.

In year’s past I felt very sad that I did not live up to monumental change I plotted for myself. The little things work out. The benchmarks that are within reach fall into place.

Pop psychologists like Dr. Phil say that your resolutions should be short and sweet. No more than three.

They shouldn’t involve:

  1. Changing someone else
  2. Blowing your life out of the water with chaotic change to achieve one small adjustment
  3. Transplanting your problems to another location
  4. Allowing holiday blahs to impact or focus your actions on change for the sake of change without appropriate planning.

Psycho social analysts like Wayne Dyer say the holidays usually cause problems to come to a head.  The usual arguments and silly intrigues seem a lot larger at Christmas. Most people I know accept the holiday pressure points. Money, relatives, hospitality to larger groups of people than usual, overly high expectations, and finding everything you bought reduced to half the price you paid.

The must do’s for holiday resolutions:

  1. Remember your limitations, energies, finances, tolerance
  2. Miracles happen, but usually little miracles. Your alchoholic uncle will not make you a bundt cake or ask for a latte.
  3. Spend as much time with people you actually love, and shun the shallow opportunities to circulate with acquaintances who you barely know.
  4. Finally, remember that there is a shift in the world’s energy at this time of the year.  Slow down, enjoy your life and keep all that is good, adding a few things here and there.

“A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”
- George Carlin