How to Improve your life in 2009!

Isn’t it funny how every year of our lives we look forward to the New Year.We think ahead. We plan ahead and make a bunch of resolutions which we have not the slightest intention to carry out. Well, we have every intention to, but somehow, never get around to it.

We plan to “go out” to see the New Year in. Party till we drop. Drink and eat too much. Behave like total idiots and kiss and hug everyone wishing everyone “Happy New Year” insincerely. We look back at the “old year” saying “well it couldn’t be worse” next year must be better. We cry at the loss of the old year or is it a cry of joy looking forward to the new year

We spend most of January 1 recovering from our excesses with a head ache, hangover or whatever, talking to the great white telephone, swearing that “I’ll never do that again!”. But our memories are short and next New Year what do we do? Well of course we repeat the same old scenario again. We never learn do we?

And as for those insincere (or at least temporarily sincere”) resolutions, how many last beyond the first day let alone the whole of January.

We plan to:

• Give up smoking

   

• Give up drinking

   

• Lose weight

   

• Improve our diets

   

• Go to the gym

   

• Try and be nicer to people

   

• See more of our relatives

   

• Renew old acquaintances

   

• Spend more time with our better halves

   

• Work less

   

• Work harder

   

• Spend more quality time with the family

   

Do you recognize yourself from the foregoing? Feel a little bit guilty or not. Let’s take them one at a time .

Give up smoking

Ok this one is not for me I don’t smoke. I never really smoked. Well in my final year at high school, peer pressure and all that, I would smoke Players Navy Cut cigarettes. The experience made me nauseous and I generally ended up puking after smoking so it was no hardship to give up smoking. Most people that attempt this are singularly unsuccessful. They sneak around smoking outside or behind toilet doors and smell of breath mints until they finally either get caught or are so caught up in the habit that they openly admit they failed “so what” and defiantly smoke publicly once again.

Give up drinking

Well this is a horse of another colour. We as a group tried his. As a number of our group (work colleagues and drinking buddies) were of Irish descent. We decided to give up drink from New years day until St Patrick's day (March 17). Well this worked quite well but some how your buddies weren’t quite so entertaining or funny when they were drinking club soda’s or lemonade after work at the local watering hole. One or two dropped off the bus but most of us stuck it out. But on St Pat’s to commemorate our “success” we had a blow out fit to bust. It made the New Year party seem like a Vicar’s Sunday tea by comparison! Score on this one? a claimed success but in reality no real change.

Lose weight

What can I say on this one. Diet/binge eating potatoes in the kitchen (these don’t count) or scooping up leftovers hen tidying up. Not a great success. This only really worked once life threatening issues came into play . See my hub on this subject. So I score a zero here too because it was not a New Year resolution thing that caused this to actually work.

Improve our diets

Here again no conscious effort to do so. As for salads “ugh bunny food” Tofu double ugh! Eat more fish. I don’t like fish. Finally I was again forced to change due to life threatening circumstances. Score zero.

Go to the gym

Well once Diets and weight came into play exercise became a necessity. This started with walking, but walking was boring so I started running and Gym finally followed on as a logical next step. Score zero.

Try and be nicer to people

Well where did that get me! By being nicer to my neighbor, my ex became his best buddy and finally left me after 34 years of marriage. Score zero

See more of our relatives

Honestly though this is a warm fuzzy feeling that is really nostalgia for those relatives you did not get to see for a while. Those that you did see generally raised your hackles and reminded you why it was good to see them only once in a while and not too soon at that. Score zero.

Renew old acquaintances

This is another of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” ideas. But basically as times passes so does the urge. Score zero

Spend more time with our better halves

Great intention but in the end “life” a four letter word gets in the way because we don’t Work less but in practice we think that we Work harder and finallyend up by not Spending more quality time with the family!

So in balance it looks like I am not really qualified to tell anyone else how to improve in 2009 as I appear to have lot of homework to do!

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