Taking A Stand: Keeping resolutions can be tough to do
Today marks the beginning and ending of some well-intended plans for self-improvement known as New Year’s resolutions.
Even as I speak, there are many diets starting and cigarette packs being laid down. And, given this is New Year’s Day, I’d say there are also quite a few people swearing off that demon rum which left them with a pounding headache when they rolled out of bed late this morning.
Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against most resolutions, seeing resolutions are basically things we either just really don’t want to do or things we’ve been putting off for a long time. The mere fact it is a new year, a clean page so to speak, doesn’t mean doing or not doing a particular deed will be any easier. After all, we generally reserve New Year’s resolutions for those albatrosses which have been hanging around our necks for a long time.
Also playing against the resolutions is the time of year. The main two resolutions according to a poll I just read are dieting and stopping smoking. Given this is still a post holiday time, much of the damage has already been done around the waist line for many who have already overeaten during the Christmas holiday. The fact leftover turkey and sweet stuff is still lurking around the house will normally prove too much of a temptation for the well-meaning dieter.
Then there’s the smokers. As we all have heard, the holidays are the most stressful time of year. And when do smokers feel they need a cigarette the most? It’s simply not fair.
I found out way back that resolutions were basically well-intended lies to one’s self, often to offset over indulgence during the holidays. There are very few resolutions I’ve made in the past which have even seen Jan. 2, let alone were lasting practices.
The only resolution, so to speak, I’ve kept for any amount of time is working out three days a week. However, I put a twist on the New Year’s resolution principal and made it my millennium resolution, beginning the routine on Dec. 31, 1999. I did it a day earlier so it wouldn’t be a New Year’s resolution, given my track record of breaking them. Now, three years later I’m still regularly working out in the gym three days a week, sometimes more.
However, something interesting I’ve learned about my success in the workout area is that it wasn’t the resolution that did it, it was simply changing addictions. As humans, we have our addictions, some good and some bad. We are addictive animals. Working out is now an addiction. If I don’t get in the gym, I start having withdrawal symptoms so to speak, feeling nervous and weak. It’s these symptoms that show me my ability to keep my “resolution” was by making it an addiction. What I did is basically trade my addiction to lying on the sofa in front of the television into getting in the gym and becoming a genetically jacked freak.
If such a positive addiction can work for me, it may be of some use for others struggling to improve themselves in the new year. A smoker, for instance, should perhaps change their addiction from smoking to an addiction on being healthy by going to the gym and getting into working out. A person who wants to restrict eating to lose weight should perhaps get an addiction to getting thinner by working daily toward that goal.
Hey, stopping something for the sake of stopping just won’t work. There has to be a reachable target to exchange one’s addictions or otherwise trying to change is next to impossible. My best advise to you people with resolutions – find a new addiction to replace the old one. Just make sure the new one is a healthy addiction.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)