Of the many fascinating and unusual New Year’s traditions, the annual writing down of New Year’s resolutions, these self-imposed vows to improve, revive, or otherwise completely overhaul our lives, is one of the most interesting. The exchanging of resolutions over a glass of champagne at a New Year’s Eve party is almost a national pass-time.
What is it about this time of year that prompts us to try to improve our lives?
Why do we go to all the trouble of writing down these impossible dreams, only to break them a few short weeks later? …and are they truly impossible?
We’ve all made them, tried to keep them, and broken most of them before the first month of the New Year was done and down. Some resolutions have not even survived the week in which they were made.
The most popular resolutions are not so lofty as to be impossible to achieve, but sticking to them can take a good deal of “resolve”, hence the term, New Year’s “resolutions”. Keeping your resolutions is supposed to be an exercise in character building, as well a means of improving your life.
The start of a New Year is the perfect time to turn a new page, which is probably why so many people create New Year’s Resolutions.
A New Year often feels like a fresh start, a great opportunity to eliminate bad habits and establish new routines that will help you grow psychologically, emotionally, socially, physically or intellectually. Of course, resolutions are much easier to make than to keep and by the end of January many of us have abandoned our resolve and settled back into our old patterns.
I expect that the usual suspects of ‘drinking less’ eating less’ and ‘getting fit’ will appear on many resolution lists …. but what about those more interesting (& achievable) ideas?
Be great to hear from you farnham locals ….!
