It’s that time of year again, when we cannot help but take some time to review our lives, while at the same time look forward to what lies ahead. At the end of those moments of reflection come the usual New Year Resolutions that we try to implement but are often forgotten before the Chinese New Year is celebrated.
One of the most common resolutions made at this time of the year is to live a little bit healthier. This is the natural reaction after the fun but mostly unhealthy holidays, where the successive cheat days means we partake of too much sweet, salty, and fatty food, along with copious amounts of alcohol. By the time the new year rolls in, most of us probably feel bloated and sluggish, along with elevated blood pressures and cholesterol levels to boot, which makes wanting to be healthy a very popular, but usually short-lived, NY resolution.
I reckon that I have 3 kg (6 lbs) of post-holiday weight gain to lose, which I should be able to get rid of by Valentine’s day if I follow my usual diet and exercise plan that has been working for me. The start of 2025 will determine if I can keep the discipline going, or if I will regress to my old ways and be unable to lose the weight that I have finally learned how to lose, after almost 50 years in this world. Aside from that, I also hope to keep my blood chemistry scores decent, which will be important if I want to maintain my quality of life for a longer period.
Another thing with growing older is the need to do a bit more weight training, because people my age will need to make up for the strength and agility that are lost as we age. I have finally fallen into a daily routine of simple kettlebell exercises that works for me, so my easy NY resolution would be to continue those exercises for as long as I can.
What makes my current health-based NY resolutions easier this time around is that I have stuck with them for the past few years, so I’m not making new ones, but just telling myself to keep it up. That is the thing with these resolutions. They are not magical, so unless we work on keeping them, they will never achieve the desired results.
My other NY resolution for this year, the relatively new one, is to be more aware of my tone of voice. I want to avoid raising my voice, which makes me seem confrontational, even when I don’t think I mean to be (yet). This is going to be difficult, especially with my family members, who are often the victims of the manner of speaking that I have gotten used to.
If you come to think of it, attempting to change the way I default to speaking to people when stressed is going to require more discipline than swinging 12kg kettlebells every day, but if I can stick to this 2025 resolution, it should yield great results in terms of self-improvement. I have always admired people who can reason their way through stressful situations without being outwardly flustered, and the first sign of stress is always the raised tone of voice that just ends up making the situation worse, most of the time.
If I don’t raise my voice at my wife anymore, it should result in a significant reduction in meaningless quarrels and hurt feelings. It would also be a double personal victory to be able to have a discussion with someone and make your point understood without having to raise your voice. How long it will take me to achieve this particular goal, I don’t know, but I reckon that it will take at least a year and up to 3 years of consistent effort before I see any results.
That’s a pretty long timeline, but if you come to think of it, that’s how New Year resolutions are supposed to work. Too many of us just assume that because it’s done during the new year, it will be magical. But whether new year or not, what most resolutions need is patience and perseverance. That’s probably why so many of us fail after making hasty resolutions that we just aren’t ready to commit to yet.
So for this year, I only have 2 new year resolutions I think I’m going to be serious about. The first isn’t really a resolution, but more of a renewal to continue the gains I have made in terms of my DIY diet and exercise regimen, because I am already comfortable at it and finally liking the results that I have achieved over the past 2 years. The second is the new one, which is to be more calm and not to raise my voice at anyone, especially when I get emotional. This is going to be a tougher one because unlike diet and exercise, it can’t be practiced daily. But it should be worth the improvement if I can get it to stick.
How about you guys, have you picked what you are going to be patient at and persevere in, this time around?*
