Resolutions You SHOULD Keep
It’s the 17th Jan and you’ve just caved and taken that first sweet sip of Pinot you said you wouldn’t have until June. But you know what? Perhaps resolutions aren’t all that important, and breaking one is the first step in breaking this cycle of making promises we can’t – and don’t want – to keep.
Resolutions, these great, big intangible mountains nigh on impossible to climb, set annually and often broken immediately. Why do we do it to ourselves? While losing a few inches around the waist can be great, setting yourself the challenge of losing 2 stone in one of the most glum and soggy months of the year is really not the one.
So change the framework and set challenges more tangible to tackle, with love. A daily goal to eat a banana instead of a Mars perhaps. Or a jog on a sunny Sunday morning instead of more Netflix in bed. There’s some good starts right there.
By implementing these small changes and tweaking the approach from ‘denying bad,’ to ‘adding good,’ we can achieve real positive change.
BE MORE PLAYFUL
Playful, adjective
1. full of play or fun; sportive; frolicsome.
2. pleasantly humorous or jesting: a playful remark.
How though? Try playing more games at the weekend, laughing at your mistakes rather than chastising yourself about them and saying yes to more new ideas and things to experience.
PUT IT OUT THERE
Want something to happen? Tell your friends, your mum, your bank manager even perhaps (particularly if you’re wanting something financial to manifest obvs.) Makes it more than a wish. Makes it more than something you’re a little to scared to admit you really want. And the more people that know about the place you long to explore or job you dream of, the more people there are that could facilitate that happening for real. In the last couple of years through word of mouth alone we’ve found a cheap new car and contacts in Indonesia to travel with. So get talking, you never know what it could help you with.
MORE ACTIVE, LESS PASSIVE
You know those people that like your every social media post but never reply to a txt? Don’t be one of those people. When you communicate try expressing yourself properly, with words and feelings and by taking an interest in those you choose to engage with. Initiate conversations with friends rather than just responding when needed makes for far richer social interactions. Send people job interview luck, ask your mum how her weekend was and don’t just annotate people’s profile pictures with a generic thumb.
BUY LESS, SPEND MORE TIME
Showing our boyfriend they’re the best thing since sliced bread shouldn’t come with a fat price tag should it? Exactly. Constantly bombarded by advertising telling us we need to buy more stuff and shower our loved ones with it is tricky to escape sometimes. Weekends spent shopping for DVDs and heart shaped truffles only for them to end up in the back of the kitchen drawer.
A passionate article by George Monbiot resurfaced on the social media rounds recently, providing particularly apt food for thought in this January period of resolutions. Forcefully, Monbiot illustrates how in our modern world we’re often driven to mindless buying in an attempt to prove to others what they mean to us. (And kind of negating the whole gesture in the process as we’re screwing up their planet with this crap.) Have a read perhaps. Then spend more time hanging out with those you love, listening to their stories, staying up late discussing your days, cooking some food. And steer clear of the novelty tea towels.
DANCE DANCE
Got working legs? Ok so finally resolve to go to more ceilidhs this year. (Pronounced kay-lee) (we know, exactly how it looks…) If you haven’t been to a ceilidh before then this year should be the year. Uplifting and sometimes rowdy, a ceilidh is a bit like a barn dance with the shaking passion of a gypsy jazz gig. They’re sociable in the the kind of old fashioned way where you dance and connect with a whole room of people, getting to know them through shared fun. They’re basically what we’re all about and we think in 2017 you’re gonna discover just how great they are too.