New Year Resolutions for the New Age Human
by Pramod Joshi Filed under Are you ready for the new year?, Breaking bad habits, Decision Making, Effectiveness, Life Skills, Motivation, Personal Growth
It’s that time of the year again – after appearing to plod along for a few lazy months, the present year suddenly starts to show more legs than a caterpillar, and starts slipping away rapidly, almost like the last few grains of sand in an hourglass. We started counting the days to Christmas and now, the New Year, start to shop for gifts for the kids and other loved ones and get ready to welcome another new baby in our lives – the New Year! Even the most cynical amongst us would admit to a strange anticipation – of newness, hope and cheer – even though there is no sudden change to the environment we can logically expect as we cross the midnight hour on December 31st. Different communities and religions have their own New Year Days spread across the 365 days of the year, yet the impending arrival of a “January 1” is the harbinger of anticipatory cheer among people in almost all countries around the world. It is also the time for the proverbial “New Year Resolutions” to be made by young and old, rich and poor, theist and atheist. So much has been and will be written about these NYRs that it seems impossible to create one more viewpoint and add some credible weight to the arguments for, or against, NYRs. But like a bulldog loath to give up on a challenge, I am going to take my shot at it!
I have personally never been fond of NYRs, but intermittently have been persuaded by peer pressure to make a few. Usually NYRs are a test of a person’s will power, and I have managed to find other ways and times of the year to test mine. For example, there was a time, early in my college and hostel life, when I began misusing the freedom I had won for myself by getting addicted to almost 10 cups of tea a day. Maybe addiction is the wrong, or rather too strong, term to be used here, for I did not really like the stuff a whole lot. But I just found myself saying “Yes” to friends and classmates whenever there was an invitation to go off to the canteen for a cuppa. This was the mid-seventies and I was in my mid-teens, and we were not yet spoilt for choice when it came to beverages, or anything else for that matter. For example, you wanted to buy yourself a car, and you had the royal luxury of choosing from among two models then made in India. You wanted to satiate your thirst, you could go with about four options, two hot and two cold. Choices were not too many in one’s life. And even if there were, as a student living off a subsistence allowance sent by my dad every month, I would have been hard pressed to exercise them. Good old tea was the cheapest option – and still is, I guess – when it came to ordering yourself a beverage, hot or cold, assuming you were ruling out the stuff coming out of the municipal tap.
Anyway, I digress, for this is not a piece on beverages, nor about choices one makes in life, but about NYRs and why we make them. So to cut to the chase, and back to those college days, I did some introspection one day and came to the conclusion that I was letting myself be taken over by this dependence on tea, and talked it over with a close friend. Now this was a friend who not only drank copious amounts of tea, but supplemented it with as many, if not more, cigarettes dangling from his lips. He laughed off my few cups of tea as no cause for concern. I turned to another one, who was a teetotaller when it came to tea and cigarettes, and he painted some dire consequences of my “addiction”, almost implying that I would not live beyond four summers, if that. Caught between these two extremes, I made a personal choice. I decided to test my resolve by giving up tea altogether. So one fine day, I went cold turkey on tea. Neither friends, nor horses, nor all the King’s men could get me to sip a cup of tea. I had resolved, and resolved well. And I did have this nasty, tenacious, bull-dog kind of obstinacy when it came to some things. An attribute that I saw as a weakness at most times, but in this particular case, it was one hell of a blessing. My resolution was tested severely in the first few days, when the body craved for that liquid and when friends turned enemies, trying to entice, coax, cajole, force and even threaten me to give in. I battled on, and soon was winning handsomely. In about 10 days, I felt good about surviving that long, especially since I had seen many friends take on similar “I will quit” kind of resolutions and promptly break down within the first 24 hours. After the initial “break-out” period, it was comparatively easy. The only issue used to be when I visited my parents during vacations, and accompanied them to visit relatives and families in the neighbourhood. Since I was now a college-going “adult”, tea was routinely offered to me on these social visits. Turning it down seemed impolite, but I gave myself no choice. I chose to insist on being spared. Some insisted, some did not. Some thought I was being snobbish, suspecting me to be the descendent of an English Lord, who turned his nose up at anything but the finest leaves from Darjeeling. Others gave me admiring glances and chastised their own son for wasting money on tea and coffee, among other things. It was a mixed bag, really. I was not a hero, nor was I a villain in the eyes of people wanting me to join them for a cup of tea. And this suited me just fine.
I went 2 years and some months with this resolution, and then gave it up voluntarily when I realized that I might be becoming a slave to the resolution itself. So I told myself to chill, break off the resolution and start sipping tea again. So I was back to a cup or two a day, but never went into the kind of mode of dependence that I had earlier fallen victim to. So though this was not a NYR, it was as good as it gets when it comes to testing one’s will power.
The desire to sign up to a NYR stems possibly from two emotions. One is a sense of inadequacy when it comes to self-control. For example, you have been spending too much on branded clothes and accessories, and up pipes the Good Old Conscience, drawing your attention to that wardrobe full of high-priced jeans and designer suits that have not been worn more than once. So when the New Year rolls around, you find yourself making a “Spend Less on Brands” NYR. Or if you have been tucking into loads of chicken (or fish, or paneer, or whatever gets you drooling at the dinner table) at the umpteen conference lunches and dinners you attend, your self-governor rusted and stuck, you get into a fightback mode and resolve to give up rich food altogether. Absent this feeling of loss of control, you would not find much motivation in setting up NYRs. The other emotion that creates a ground fertile for NYR growth is optimism. The hope that you can prevail over a situation that is affecting you adversely. For example, we are forever hopeful of looking fitter and younger, and this gets us into signing up for the gym come New Year’s Eve, resolute in our desire to lose those ungainly pounds and trim the belly fat. Then there are people who are hoping to make that big promotion, but finding that the boss does not seem to share their enthusiasm for the elevation. Their NYR is full of promises to be punctual, better managed, more skilled, whatever! Whatever it takes to get the boss to finally notice you are more than a piece of furniture in the office. Absent this sense of optimism, how many of us would even bother to write up a few NYRs? So much for the psychological (some might say psychobabble) genesis of New Year Resolutions! What about their prognoses? What are the chances of their living beyond the first few days of the year? Will you see yourself giving them a stately burial, come February – no post mortem required, thank you?
In today’s high-paced world, when we are over bombarded with stimuli, can we make NYRs that will last forever? Or should we scale back our ambitions and be more modest about honouring them? Or taking things further, should we start a trend of having celebration parties around the end of January to backslap each other and swap stories about how good it all was while it lasted?
I lean towards moderation of ambition, when it comes to NYRs. It is better to make a smaller, shorter-lived NYR than a grand one, signing away your life to chastity or abstinence. Go with 12 smaller NMRs, one for each month from January to December, and live up to them and rejoice. You get more variety, you get more practice and you increase your chances of success. And if you fail a few times (say three), nine out of twelve does not look as bad as zero out of three, does it?
You seem partly convinced, but are still giving me that quizzical look? You want to know where the heck does one get twelve NMRs from, when getting a couple of NYRs is itself a challenge? Don’t sweat, for I am in the process of building the world’s first New Year Resolution Bank – NYRB Online. Like you go online and google for a name or word or phrase and get a gazillion responses, you would be able to search for NYRs of your liking on this website I have conceived of. A NYR to suit every taste, every pocket, every barrier to entry and exit! Just drop them into your shopping cart and checkout as many as you want. You could walk down the Health aisle and pick one on not eating burgers in June, pick another on replacing your cooking medium with olive oil in November. Or stroll down the Lifestyle aisle and check out the ones on smoking (“March shall be my No-smoking zone”, “Only one cigar in all of July”, etc.), flirting (“No more than four dates in August”, “No lip locks with him all of September”, etc.) or spending (“No credit card purchases in April”, “Only Dutch treats on Valentine’s Day”, etc.). New sections added every day, new NYRs uploaded every hour! You can’t make life easier than this for the New Age Human, already strapped for time and spoilt for choice, can you? Of course, we shall soon be offering NYR monitors that will keep you from falling off the wagon. You checkout a few NYRs from the online store, and come into the NYR store and get fitted with a few micro-monitors that will constantly track your every move and keep matching it with the NYRs you bought. You stray from one, and a nicely positioned electric impulse shall do the needful. You falter on the second one, and the system docks you a grand for the violation. You make NYR breaking a hobby, and we send out armed guards to crack a few ribs. Customer satisfaction guaranteed – lifetime!
You want to know my NYR this year? Well, I have resolved to spend all my energies in designing and developing the World’s first NYR Bank in the coming year. I swear I am going to do it! Come January 2009, you will see me hard at work, making this resolution a reality.
Who shall monitor this NYR of mine, you ask? Ah now, that is the million dollar question! Amen.
Pramod voluntarily gave up his plum position as the Managing Director of Syncata in 2005 to focus on his passion for training, teaching and mentoring. He believes in having fun while doing whatever he does, and infects people with the same virus! Contact him at pramodkjoshi@gmail.com.
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This is a case of 12 being better than 1! It’s far more motivating to set your sights at something achievable than something that sounds virtuous, but is impractical.
The idea of exercising one’s will power is certainly a good one especially as we live in a ‘me want it now, me get it now’ society. It could help us to examine our lifestyles and see what baggage we carry around with us.
By the way, I know what you mean about tea addiction! It is actually quite a dangerous habit to get into, especially when coupled with cigarettes. I’m experimenting with caffeine free and trying to keep my consumption down to one or two cups before 4 pm.