New Years Eve
It’s that time of year where end of the year lists start coming out. People start talking about what they’ve achieved. People start planning their resolutions, in the hopes that this time will be different and they won’t break them.
For years previous, my resolutions would be the usual kind: lose weight, get fit, buy less, be more social and work harder. I’d always break them and always feel horribly guilty for doing so.
For the coming year, I have decided: no more.
I refuse to make myself feel guilty for not keeping resolutions. I refuse to attempt to keep resolutions. I think they set a person up for failure. Especially resolutions relating to weight.
We all tend to overindulge during the festive season. Most of us tend to beat ourselves up for it. Hell, I even caught myself doing it on Christmas Day. The reality is, one day out of 365 is not going to magically make a person put on a million kilograms. Enjoying the food, the drink and the company of family and friends during Christmas is not the end of the world. Normal eating habits will re-emerge.
This is something I had to remind myself. I keep up with my exercise because it vastly improves my mental health and I always need to be doing something. But skipping a day or two here and there, again, is not the end of the world.
I think we tend to be too hard on ourselves. We expect too much. We expect to be perfect. Resolutions and the end of the year seem to magnify this immensely.
I panicked when I realised I didn’t think to do anything for New Years Eve this year. I wasn’t invited anywhere and I didn’t make any concrete plans. I didn’t want to go out and fight crowds and pay cover charge, but I wanted to do something. I still have this idea in my head that having an awesome New Years Eve sets up the trend for the rest of the year (despite this year being proof against that). This factored into my personal resolution of trying to be more social and go to more events. So – panic when nothing eventuated.
I tried to remind myself that it didn’t really matter. I’d made plans to go out to dinner with my mother and thought that would be plan enough. But then I got an invite to a friend’s place and I jumped at the chance.
But it made me realise – wow, was I beating myself up for not having a great year, for not following those previous resolutions, for not sticking to my regimented plan for perfection. Nothing really went the way I wanted it to this year. And you know what? That’s ok. I have to learn to let go a little and not be so rigid. This year has been a great learning experience for me. I feel like I’ve changed and grown as a person and want to continue to do so.
