January Tragedy...

18     New Year’s Tragedy…
“I’ll do it in January.”
“When New Year comes…”
“After the holidays…”
“When the parties finish…”
“When the kids go back to school…”
“When the evenings begin to stretch…”
And so it goes. Year in, year out, the never-ending excuses at which we’re all so adept. In early January there’ll be a tsunami of elegantly clad bodies, a mass personification of sartorial elegance, swamping the gyms, the footpaths and the spinning classes. And that’s ok.
There’ll be an aura of purpose and wilful intention in the air. Radios, televisions, newspapers, will be trumpeting this course, that programme, the other diet, to be fit, trim and toned.
Holiday brochures will colour our imagination and move us to action. And that’s ok, too.
For a couple of weeks, maybe even a few months, the actions will almost become part of our routine. Almost.
And that’s not ok.
We get ambushed, sidetracked, seduced, back into the comfort zone.
Willingly.
We tell ourselves that just this once, we’ll eat that pie, miss that session, have that pint; just this once.
And that’s ok.
But then we reinforce our capitulation.We get very creative.
We start another story. We tell ourselves “It’s really hard…”, “I must have been nuts…”, “It wasn’t a bad idea, but…”, “Too much on at the moment…”, “I’ll get back to it when…”, and all the other dollops of horse-manure that torpedo our plans,  scupper the idea, and let our lives sink back into autopilot.
And that’s not ok. Especially when that isn’t what we want to happen, and yet we let it happen.
And yes, it can be hard. Timing can be difficult. It doesn’t always fit with what we’d rather be doing. But that’s part of the price. Part of it.
It’s about changing some part of our minds and our lives. We can’t guarantee what the outcome will be. But we can guarantee ourselves the change in purpose, the first tentative steps that give direction, meaning, to where we’d like to go.
Then, whatever about the outcome, we can honestly say, ‘We’re headed in the right direction.’ And know it.
Would you dare to do this? See the next post for how to go about it.
 

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