1 January 2008
New Year’s Irresolution
By Thomas Grow
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In 153 B.C.E., January became the official start of the new year. (March previously had this title on the Roman calendar). This month was named after the Janus, the mythical Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings. According to the myth, Janus had two faces, one on the front and one on the back of his head, allowing him to look forward and backward at the same time. So the logic was that January 1st was a day to look back on the year just past and a day to look forward to the upcoming year.
January was named after the Roman god Janus.
Today, many people use this date, January 1, as a mile marker for acheiving goals and making changes. Having such a milestone supplies some with motivation to start. But what keeps one sticking to such “New Year’s Resolutions”?
Personally, I don’t believe in making and committing to New Year’s resolutions. Now, notice that I did not say that I don’t believe in making and committing to resolutions in general. On the contrary, I believe that making resolutions, resolving to make changes to better yourself in some way, is very important, if not critical at times. However, waiting for a certain date, such as January 1, for a nice pretty milestone, is counter-productive.
An OCD Society
Who starts a diet on a Tuesday?
Now, granted, it is nice to start a new change in life on a particular day. The more important the milestone, the more important the date might seem. For example, some people choose to get married on Valentine’s Day. If you approach a couple married on that day, and then take them aside individually to ask them why they chose that date to be their anniversary date, while the wife might say, “because it’s a romantic day”, the husband might, after looking around and making sure that he is out of earshot of his second half, tell you, “so I don’t ever forget my anniversary!”
In reality, if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us wonder if we have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Who starts a diet on a Tuesday? (Um, unless it happens to be January 1, 2008.) Most of the time, we’ll start our diet or some other “life change” on a Monday, because it’s the beginning of the week… or the first of the month or something like that. We like everything to begin and end cleanly. We don’t make it a goal to someday bench 306.2 pounds… we want to bench 300. We don’t want to lose 47 pounds… we round it up to 50. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that. It’s just in our nature. I’m like that too. A lot of us could relate to that credit card commercial with Jerry Seinfeld pumps gas and stops on a nice even price, like $20, and then looks at a near-by fellow gas pumper with a mischeivous look, and pumps another 17 cents into the tank. The onlooker’s face pales as he sees this horrific act take place in front of his eyes.
On the surface, a little OCD doesn’t seem all that bad. And maybe it really isn’t. I mean, it does motivate us to make that first step, right? Without January 1st, alot of people would never decide to make that change that they have been wanting and needing to make. Without Mondays, we would never feel like we have a good way to start undoing what we did over the three-day weekend. (Yeah, sometimes “free day” can be a little longer 24 hours!) But, what about when it gets to February 17th and your workout schedule gets out of wack because Uncle Wolfgang The Gourmet Chefvisits youand treats you to a week and a half of the richest, most incredible, and most fattening meals fit for a king? (King Henry VIII was a big guy… Wolfgang must have had a distant relative on ol’ Hank’s payroll.) Nine days later, you’re standing on the scale, only to find yourself weighing more than the weight that made you decide on your “New Year’s Resolution” in the first place. Sigh. You shake your head. What’s the use? You’ve already blasted your resolution out of the water. Might as well enjoy the rest of the year and start over again next January. Note to self: Tell Uncle Wolfy to stay home. Now, where is that Haagen Daaz?
You see, I see establishing your goals in OCD fashion… needing to start on a certain date or day, shooting for a nice round number, etc., as something that works for some people; but for most of us, it’s a house of cards. When we start a goal based on a nice, round, perfect starting point, we do tend to focus. That’s good. That’s very good. However, as soon something goes wrong (Hey Murphy, how’s it going?), your little goal of an 18-room card mansion is suddenly transformed to a frustrating game of 52 Pickup. (Actually, I guess for an 18-roomer, you’d have alot more than one deck… but you get the idea.) Bye bye focus. Bye bye cards. Hellooo, Fleming’s Lava Cake! (Seriously, if you’ve never had it… )
My Freakin’ Expensive Anniversary
It kind of goes back to my Valentine wedding analogy. Sure, it may have seemed like a great idea at the time. But what happens then starting with the first anniversary? Hmm…
“Honey, bad news. All of the hotels are booked for our anniversary weekend. Well, except for Red Roof Inn. But they’ve jacked the price up.”
If you need to resolve to make a change, then make that resolution now. Period. Don’t wait until a certain special day. Don’t set the bar so high or expect everything to go perfect. If you do, you may never see your goal.
Who starts a diet on a Tuesday?[/div]It gets better. Flowers mysteriously double in price overnight. Except for the roses, of course… they at the veryleast triple. And Godiva seems to always have the Lets-Do-The-Opposite-Of-A-Sale-But-Still-Call-It-A-Sale Valentine’sDay sale. Sure, the husband may never forget his anniversary date, and his wife may always picture him as a romantic… but their anniversary is never going to be a cheap one. And I’ll tell ya, if my wife isn’t put up in a Ritz, she’s not a happy camper.
The conclusion that I have come down to is this. If you need to resolve to make a change, then make that resolution now. Period. Don’t wait until a certain special day. Don’t set the bar so high or expect everything to go perfect. If you do, you may never see your goal. Your picture-perfect twelve week transformation may come to an abrupt end in 12 days. And the more discouraged you get, the more often you will fail. And the more often you fail, the more discouraged you will get. It’s a vicious dog-chasing-his-tail cycle.
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This article contains the following tags: Habits,Keeping Goals,Motivation,New Year Resolution,Setting Goals
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