Happy New Year Resolutions?

“New Year, New You”, “Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year”, “Dry January” – we’ve heard them all and, as predictably as the holiday advertisements appear whilst we’re still trying to digest our Christmas dinner, we know the set of messages which will be coming our way now that January is upon us.

How many times have you been asked what your New Year resolutions are for 2015? Past research has put our lack of planning and ability to break a large project down into more manageable tasks as the main reasons why only 10% of us ever achieve our resolutions.

So, if 90% of us fail at our new weight loss programme, exercise regime, healthy eating agenda, alcohol free month or whatever, is it any wonder that Blue Monday has crept into our common vocabulary over recent years to describe that third Monday in January when most of us have already failed at what we so recently aimed to achieve?

• Perhaps our only resolution this year should be to stop being so hard on ourselves.
• Perhaps, living where we do, January isn’t the best month to try and make large changes as we’re already short of natural daylight which leaves many people with a dip in their mood.
• Perhaps our time would be better spent re-assessing what we’d like to change in our lives and making a realistic and detailed plan for how to achieve it.
• Perhaps, this might lead to us making permanent changes to our lifestyle which would reduce the need for us to be in this position again next year.
• And perhaps, just perhaps, we stop doing things because we feel pressurised by convention and do things instead which will improve our lives and increase our wellbeing.

Hopefully some food for thought, but whatever you decide everyone at In Equilibrium would like to wish you a very peaceful, happy and prosperous 2015.