The start of the new year seems as good as time as any to make a resolution. I will not eat a chocolate croissant from the bakery for morning tea, I am going to walk to work, no more smoking for me, this year I will get to Vietnam, I will help out at the homeless shelter one night a week, and so on and so forth. Even though we spend New Year’s Eve in a drunken stupor, most of the promises we make to ourselves for the next day are generally broken within a week. So how come we can’t stick to our New Year’s Resolutions?
Do we make such unattainable resolutions that we can’t keep them for seven days, or do we just make too many? Here we look at some of the common resolutions and whether these resolutions are truly attainable.
Drink less alcohol
The reason why this one is so hard to keep is because you have probably spent the first hour of January 1 absolutely blotto at a New Year’s Eve party. And what better way to ring in the New Year than with a glass of bubbles in one hand and someone you’ve just met that you are about to lay a big fat sloppy kiss on. Then you stumble out of bed around 1.00 pm that day and decide hair of the dog is a great idea. Drink less alcohol for the new year, now you’re just setting yourself up for disaster with that one there. Let’s not mention Australia Day parties in late January and this resolution is done and dusted in the first month alone.
Spend more time with family and friends
Remembering that New Year’s Day comes a full week after Christmas Day, technically it’s still too soon to get together again. I mean we have just spent days and days of hanging out with brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and second and third cousins, do we really want to promise to have them over for a lamb roast next Sunday? Let’s just give each other some breathing space and leave this promise closer to winter time when they can all come in handy by providing your house with some body warmth.
Travel, travel, travel
When you wake up on 1 January, you will be surprised to find that a return round the world ticket isn’t in your possession, neither do you have a lazy $3000 that was neatly placed into your bank account overnight to afford such travel. Unless you fancy a trip along the Great Ocean Road, the idea of travel can’t be miraculously solved overnight and takes a little thing called planning and saving to achieve.
More exercise
Let’s be honest here, did you use that gym membership that you bought to its full potential in 2011? Then what makes you think that you will join an RPM class or body pump in 2012? We all start off the New Year with the best intentions to lose the pounds we put on over the silly season but after a week and a bit, and not to mention summer parties, all our best intentions fall by the wayside. You spend the first week of January doing 50 sit ups in the morning, you’re the first one there to your pilates class in the new get-up you bought at the Boxing Day sales but come February, the lycra is pushed as far into your closet as your Ian Thorpe one-piece “I am going to swim every morning just like they did in that show with Asher Keddie” bathing suit. And that resolution you made with your mate to join a dance class? A netball team? Even indoor soccer gets neglected for summer barbecues and rooftop bars.
Quit smoking
What will you have with your frappe? Something tells me that fidgeting with your iPhone just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Save money
Ahhh the all important promise to put some money away so you can enjoy all the spoils the New Year has to offer. But how impossible is this New Year’s Resolution when you are faced with sales, summer weddings and the need to buy fake tan to compensate for your white skin? Everyone likes to think the budget they spent hours on in the last hours of the old year will come into fruition but wait till you head to the wedding registry at David Jones for your cousin’s nuptials and even this resolution can’t be met.
Learn a new language
The first class of Spanish tuition is met with such vigour and excitement as you sit in your CAE course with the new notepad and dictionary you purchased at Dymocks but come week three, even saying “choritho” with a lisp loses its charm. If you want your New Year filled with culture, go hire a foreign film from the local DVD store and copy what they say than waste hundreds of dollars on a language class you probably won’t get to.
New job
Having a fresh outlook on the New Year reminds you of all the things that annoyed you in the previous one, including your job. The same mundane place you spend hours upon hours in, the same stories from the same people start grating on you by around Christmas time that you spend the eventual break between vowing never to return. But you do, and another year passes and all you have to show for it are the dozens of felt-tipped pens you nicked from the stationery cupboard.
Become a volunteer
The good intentions of the New Year when you vow to be a better person than you were the year before. Promising to volunteer at an old folk’s home, the RSPCA, a homeless shelter are all filled with good meaning, but after the first time you volunteer hours for free from a week where you don’t even have time to scrub your shower, you soon rethink your resolution and vow to be a better person just by saying hello to a fellow commuter on the bus ride to work.
Be more organised
As a Greek, it’s not in our genes to be more organised so sack this one off as not to disappoint yourself.