New Year’s Resolution

‘New Year, New You’ B.S. (Hear! Hear!)

January 1, 2019 by Live & Learn 26 Comments

And now for “27 ways to feel bad about yourself while the last piece of Christmas pudding you’ve ‘indulged’ in is still making its way through your intestinal tract…”

As the new year dawns, you’ll notice that without ANY space to breathe whatsoever, what was once a newsfeed saturated with sequins, pints and party platters becomes one bursting at the seams with resistance bands, Nutri Bullets and all manner of “New Year, New You” rhetoric. If that works for you, great. If it doesn’t, keep on reading…

If you find all of this relentless (and, at times, negative) then join the club. I’ve decided I’m over it. I’ve clicked the “unsubscribe” button and it’s incredibly liberating.”New Year, New You” regimes are framed in such a way that they seem motivating, uplifting and encouraging. The reality is they’re designed to sell gym members and juice cleanses at a time when they’re most marketable and we’re most vulnerable. The sheer volume and velocity of this kind of content coming at us from every angle — while we’re still polishing off the last of the mince pies — can make us feel as though we’ve already failed within the first few minutes of the new year.Add to the mix, the pressure of New Year’s resolutions — which suggest that regardless of our current situation, we have much to improve upon; that we need to be better. We’re encouraged to set out a new set of goals, towards which to move to in the hopes of finding what we all want: happiness. We’ve barely finished the last verse of Auld Lang Syne and already, we’re exhausted, defeated and riddled with festive guilt.But here’s a thought: instead of subscribing to what’s become a very tired narrative, this year, let January be yours. (Read Caroline Foran’s 6 tips for moving forward here.)

So, if you insist on resolving to do something, do this: go easy on yourself, be your own benchmark for success. And think about the kind of lifestyle you want to live. Happy New Year.

~ Caroline Foran, from “6 reasons I no longer subscribe to ‘New Year, New You’ BS” (Mashable, January 1, 2019). Caroline Foran is a journalist and a best-selling author of “Owning It: Your Bullshit Free Guide to Living With Anxiety” and “The Confidence Kit: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Owning Your Fear“.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: caroline foran, diet, Exercise, Inspirational, New Year, New Year's Resolution, Photography, Quotes, resolution, resolutions

Resolutions. Day 1.

January 1, 2018 by Live & Learn 23 Comments

Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold…

– Kim Addonizio, from “New Year’s Day” in Tell Me

Notes:

Inspired by Lucille Clifton, “I am running into a new year” (via Read a Little Poetry): i am running into a new year / and the old years blow back / like a wind / that i catch in my hair / like strong fingers like / all my old promises and / it will be hard to let go / of what i said to myself / about myself…
Poem Source – Memory’s Landscape.
Photo: Frozen Lake Tremblant in the Laurentides region of Quebec. Photo by Timothy A. Clary, Agence France, wsj.com December 24, 2017)

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: acceptance, Inspirational, Kim Addonizio, Lucille Clifton, New Year, New Year's Day, New Year's Resolution, Peace, Photography, Poetry, Quotes, resolutions

2015: Flummoxed by the Paradoxical Commandments

December 31, 2015 by Live & Learn 52 Comments

If you haven’t read Kent M. Keith’s The Paradoxical Commandments, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. If you were looking for the origin of these commandments and the connection to Mother Theresa, look here: The Mother Theresa Connection.

In my reflection of events in 2015, I do find the commandments paradoxical. Let’s take a few highlights for a spin.

KMK:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

DK: You are on a JetBlue flight. The woman sitting next to you in Coach removes her shoes, her stockings and then places her feet up on the seat in front of you. She wiggles her chubby toes to air out her dogs. (In case you were dying to know, she had a nice pedicure. The toenail polish was a pretty baby blue matching her fingernails. And there was no visible toe jam.)

KMK:
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
KMK: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

DK:

You come home from work, its late, it’s been a long (very) day. You are eating dinner, alone. Your head is down. (Important to note: Head Down.) Your spouse of 30+ years looks over from the couch, sees Gaps, and asks if you’ve considered Rogaine. You lift your head, your mouth is full – you try to validate if you just heard what you think you heard. You chew. You swallow, and then ask: “Excuse me. I didn’t hear what you said.” She repeats it crossing the “Red-Line” of no communication during the first 10 minutes of the King’s decompression zone. You reel from two scuds to the chest, elect to drop your head down with no response and finish your dinner. For the next 123 days, you start your day each morning staring at the mirror assessing the speed of the backward march of your hair line. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Quotes Tagged With: Children, commandments, daughter, Family, Funny, Inspirational, Mother Theresa, New Year, New Year's Resolution, Parent, Quotes, Son, Story

Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum.

January 2, 2015 by Live & Learn 11 Comments

For the New Year—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:—I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, January of 1882, Sanctus Januarius in The Gay Science

Credits: Quote Source: Brainpickings. Portrait (modified): izquotes.com

Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: accuse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Inspirational, judgment, Love, New Year, New Year's Day, New Year's Resolution, optimistic, portrait, positive, Psychology, Quote, resolution, War

Let’s face it, New Year’s resolutions are venomous things.

January 1, 2015 by Live & Learn 17 Comments

Let’s face it, New Year’s resolutions are venomous things. You make them, you break them, you feel lousy, you forget them. But if your bent is masochism and you insist, I recommend reasonable things that are not hard to accomplish: This year I resolve not to drink furniture polish. I resolve to give away all my patent leather. I resolve to pet as many dogs as will permit me.

I once resolved to give up cigarettes but then realized they were one of my oldest friends. As one grows older, we need all the friends we can get so forget that resolution. Likewise drinking. I have never liked to drink so I don’t, but I refused to give it up on numerous occasions for a New Year’s resolution because who knows — one day drinking might come in handy and then where would I be? You have to be careful about these things — life is long and pleasure is short and too often life wins.

If a gun were pointed at my head today and the man in the black cape announced, “Make a resolution or die!” I would grudgingly say, “This year I will try to be kinder, more patient, and as generous as a baby with a cookie.”

The problem with resolutions is we know ourselves pretty well and know if we ain’t doing it now, we probably won’t begin on January 1st. I guess the best thing to do is start in immediately but make no promises to yourself or anyone else. Certainly not out loud. We can make lists and resolutions all day long but the doing is what matters and that can begin any day.

– Jonathan Carroll

Jonathan Samuel Carroll, 65, was born in NYC and has lived in Austria since the 1970s. He is an American fiction writer primarily known for novels that may be labelled magic realism,slipstream or contemporary fantasy.