Welcome to 2016! "New Year, New Me" as the saying goes, right? Well, no actually. That kind of implies that the 'old' you was bad and something to be rid of. That's a pretty negative way to begin any sort of introspective assessment don't you think? Sure, it's catchier than 'New Year, let's look at all the cool ways I can improve my personal life experience for the next 12 months' but I never was one for slogans.
So, besides being cynical of well meaning catch phrases, what am I getting at? Well I'm glad you asked! The new year is the ideal time for personal reflection. All of the celebrations are over and we have a long cold slog towards spring when the weather brightens up and the days get longer and everything starts to feel more positive (I realise I don't have to explain what Spring is to everyone, I'm just being poetic). But change on a personal level doesn't have to mean setting a vague goal like 'be more healthy', 'exercise more often', or even something big to strive for like 'run a marathon' or 'find a cure for ear hair' (feel free to contact me if you have this one though!).
Not that I want to dismiss these ideas out of hand. Believe me if you've decided to run a marathon this year I wish you all the very best of luck. But consistently, I find that the happiest and most fulfilled people I know are those that employ small habits like these as part of their day to day life that promote the positive environment from which you can start to tackle the bigger, singular goals.
Let's begin....
1. Make A List
See what I did there? Now, this is a fairly easy one, but I challenge anyone to tell me they don't like the feeling of ticking tasks off of a to-do list! It's the simplest, goal oriented, self-affirming thing you can do. Listing your next day's activities can help you get a good nights sleep, listing tasks can make your days off more productive. There are miriad apps and online tools to help organise you so get to it. However, there is another side to this first point. One that exercises a change in perspective...
If, purely as an example, you have had a particularly trying time over the last year, it may seem like the new calendar year is your saving grace, the event you've been striving towards because it will mean the end of the bad year and a fresh beginning. Sadly, there is no switch that heralds this miracle end to your woes. The new year is just a way for us to measure the passing of time, nothing more. Instead, use this marker of time to take stock, to list the positives that you have experienced since the previous marker. There are events that occur to us all that leave a profound mark on our view of a period of time, but there are nuggets of joy that will occur and shine through even the darkest of times. Find them, list them and use them as the foundation of your journey through the next year. Hopefully it will encourage you to see each new day as a fresh opportunity, instead of each year. You will then start to embrace time as a smaller unit and appreciate the small, seemingly insignificant events that shape your days. Someone held a door for you, you found a £5 note in your pocket, a stranger wished you a good day. Better yet, make these opportunities! Hold the door for somebody, give the £5 you found to someone in need or a charity, make eye contact with a stranger and wish them a good day. You will soon start to look for these positives, and by listing them, either mentally or physically, you create a strong positive outlook that gives you strength to deal with the genuine struggles we will all face. Trust me, it's a lot better than expecting some celestial intervention on account of the date.
2. Find an exercise you enjoy
A great deal of people feel that the new year is the time to start getting fit and healthy. The obstacle here is that very few people enjoy the thought what is typically considered as exercise. The honest truth is that unless you're willing to work hard, and I do mean hard, you're unlikely to see a great deal of change. That said, every journey starts with a step, and that step has to be one you want to take. Think of how much fun a skipping rope is to young children. Do they think 'this is awesome cardio' or 'if I do this for 20 minutes I'm allowed a donut'? Not likely (as in, I genuinely hope not!), they're just having fun. So it should be when you find your exercise.
Walking, cycling, jazzercise; it's all relevant. The not-so-secret secret to it all is being able to see results. And that could simply be a smile on your face to begin with. If the act itself is a hard miserable slog that you're wishing would just end for its duration then it's probably not the best place to start. Especially if afterwards you feel compelled to 'treat' yourself to a fag or half a chocolate gateau just for the reward feeling your body is craving. Instead, find something that excites you, that encourages you to repeat it. Ballroom dancing, swimming, gymnastics, a martial art, playing music (yes, this burns calories too although considering it exercise might be a stretch), tending a vegetable patch. It doesn't really matter what the activity is, so long as it's active and makes you feel happy and energised. You'll soon find a desire to seek the next, potentially more challenging activity and that could very be the exercise epiphany you have always desired.
3. Learn to enjoy and understand food
Food can be a stressful, confusing and downright frustrating minefield of conflicting advice and contradiction that can leave all of us not knowing where to start. Fat-free, gluten-free, low salt, low sugar, organic, anti-oxidant... What does it all mean, besides a headache from trying to make the right choices? Here's the thing, common sense and a little knowledge can allow you to prevail in this scenario. But first, there's something that I need to get off my chest. Fast food is not a treat! At best it's a last resort! There, I've said it.
Compare these two dining examples:
A. Enter a burger establishment, having negotiated your way around the loitering youths that seem to be always congregated outside the door. Stand in a queue while you crane your next to look at the illuminated billboard menu and order a burger that costs less than a roll of toilet paper (now that's something worth contemplating...), that may or may not be actual meat and has possibly sat under a heatlamp for a few hours along with fries that were freeze-dried potato powder mere hours ago. Carry said food on a plastic tray to a plastic table and sit on a plastic chair covered in a few years worth of chewing gum and remorse. Leave feeling as grey as the food you have just eaten.
B. Enter a burger restaurant. Get shown to a table or booth and peruse the menu full of clever word play and exciting combinations of tasty looking ingredients. Order a burger made with 100% Aberdeen Angus beef. Specify to the waiting staff how you would like your patty cooked and order the hand cut, triple cooked fries to go with it. Enjoy the ambience of the pretentiously interior-designed decor with bare brickwork and exposed, dimmed lightbulbs and leave feeling full of tasty food and the sort of regret that only comes from the kind of debauchery that was totally worth it.
Make no mistake, both of these experiences will do nothing for your waistline or good intentions, but only one of the two points above should be considered a treat! And frankly, the expense of the latter will encourage you to do it less often.
What I'm really trying to get at is that food, for the majority of us in the western world, is a genuine privilege and something that we should learn to respect and enjoy. And when I say enjoy, I don't mean over indulge, nor do I mean eat lettuce and celery all week and have a blowout burger meal every weekend. Unless you have specific dietary requirements, I would encourage that a diet built on moderation is the key. Butter, chocolate, bacon; it's all ok if you understand that it's part of a daily routine that includes fruit, vegetables and a dollop of self control. It doesn't have to be difficult, it's just about making sensible choices. Have a sweet jar, and have a fruit bowl. Having only one of the above choices will make you resent not having the other. Put them next to one another and, just maybe, while reaching for the sweets you may just take the fruit instead. By giving yourself the choice, you give yourself the opportunity to make a better decision. But make no mistake, if you live in the developed world you are among the very luckiest people alive and as such you should embrace the opportunity to eat well and enjoy the experience whilst exercising a modest and moderated approach to what (and more importantly, how much) you eat.
4. Embrace the ritual
I first started drinking coffee as a sort of coping mechanism. I was working a full 5 day week in retail and teaching guitar privately for up to three hours after every work day. It was tough going and the coffee machine at work was frequented more often than I can recount. Before that I had no taste for it. When I finally discovered 'real' coffee it was a revelation. I couldn't imagine a morning without it. I'm normally up at 6-6:15am during the week so it seems essential. But recently, I have had a revelation of sorts. I realised that transform from drooling, morning-zombie to wide awake before the coffee has even touched my lips. How could this be? Well, it's the preparation of my coffe that does it. The scooping of the coffee grounds into my cafetière, or more recently my Aero-Press, the steam from the hot water as it covers the grounds and releases that smell, the wait for the coffee to infuse and the pouring into my favourite mug. No ingestion required. The drinking is the icing on the cake but that routine has become so ingrained as part of my morning routine that I feel something is missing if I don't get to do it. The ritual...
Ritual can be found in so many activities. Cooking for example. Finding a recipe that you like and feeling the ingredients evolve from separate, unassociated items into a meal. Tasting something that you, yourself have created can invoke a sence of pride and achievement that you'll want to revisit. How about the point above about an exercise you love? The ritual applies here too. You will probably have certain days that your activity applies to and once that becomes part of your weekly routine, the ritual takes hold. By recognising these activities in a ritualistic way, it is possible that you might start to consider other actions in this way. How you approach your daily work, your breaks and lunches. Hopefully you will appreciate the finer details of even the smallest things you do and gain a sense of purpose in your day to day.
5.Think yourself happy
I guess this last point is a summary of all of the above points. That, or I'm road testing the title of my next self help book... Obviously this whole article is born of one person's experiences and observations and so there is no expectation that these views will improve anything about your 2016. But the running theme throughout all of these points is mindset. Applying a thought process that doesn't always come naturally to any of us in this often negative social climate. But I believe that we all have a choice. A choice in how we react in any given situation. The difficulty is recognising this choice, or at least acknowledging it. We are all, however, capable of choosing how to react. It stars with appreciating the power of a simple thought.
Want to get strong? According to Researchers at Ohio Universty, simply imagining doing exercise improved strength both physically and mentally. Your mind is your strongest muscle after all! Want to lose weight? Again, study after study says that this is a mental goal as much as a dietary one (see above suggestion about the sweet jar and fruit bowl). Want to be happier? Choose to recognise or create some positives in your daily life. Want to be successful? Know that you can achieve your goals before you start! If you subscribe to the Quantum Physics theory that time is not linear, then you could consider that you have already achieved your aim and your actions are just the completion of this inevitable conclusion.
Learn to recognise when choices present themselves to you. Someone cuts you up on the road? Get angry or be glad that they're speeding away from you and nothing bad has actually happened? See a provocative post on Facebook? Rise to it and reply with an equally provocative post or scroll past it? These are the mundane and common choices we all face daily but these choices will affect your mindset throughout the day. While we're on the subject of social media, take the time to fill your news feed with things that positively reinforce your new outlook. There are plenty of pages full of uplifting videos and articles, tasty recipes, and enriching experiences that will turn the habitual scrolling through self indulgent vagueness and duck faced selfies into something uplifting and aspirational.
So there you have it. My top 5 tips for a healthier outlook, not just for the new year but hopefully for the foreseeable future. Thank you for taking the time to read through these musings. I do consider myself to be a happy person and I enjoy looking at life through these rose tinted lenses. It's not always this easy, but for the times that you're presented with opportunities to improve your own daily experience, I hope these five habits will give you the confidence to take them.
