I purposefully didn’t write this blog at New Year. It seemed to have too puritanical a sentiment – rather like a teetotaller at a
New Year Eve’s party.
Now it is 14 January and many resolutions have already lost their lustre, fading with the alcoholic haze of their New Year’s Eve’s
making. Leaving only the tart taste of self-judgment. Why have I already started eating chocolate again? Why have I only lost
three pounds? Why haven’t I got a new job? Gone to gym, starting training for a marathon? And so on…
The problem is really in the actual idea of New Year resolutions. What most of us mean is an extensive To Do list that normally
involves a large dose of improbability and fantasy. Ultimately, more ambitious goals. You are tall and broad-framed, yet you set
yourself an unrealistic and, frankly, unkind weight loss. You are determined to get promoted, by February. Rather than
resolving to live our lives more fully, be more present for ourselves and others, listen more, talk less, respond more, react less,
we come up with a list of ambitions, desires, wants, driven by the insecure feeling that we are not enough, particularly potent in
the aftermath of the holidays.
Post New Year, we simply switch cocktails and canapes for the latest outrageously promising extreme diet, blissfully unaware
that both are equally excessive and unhealthy. Both ends of the spectrum are distractions, often simply from ourselves.
We are bored with this time of year: bored with the empty diary date and bored with ourselves. Boredom is often rooted in lack
of attention: to ourselves and others. We set goals to get away from ourselves, our present lives, our reality.
So here is an alternative.
My To Be Present list for 2019:
Self care
Self compassion
Appreciate joy
Do less
Rest more
Generosity is the biggest fix
Create balance
Don’t separate work and life – it is all, every moment of it, life
