New Years Resolutions!

Okay so it’s nearly Feb but a resolution is a good idea at any time and thinking about making a change that will benefit your life can be a really helpful thing, especially if you stick to it. Well given the numerous jokes about how quickly New Years resolutions get broken you might not think this such a good topic but my point isn't about how easily they get broken or about how hard they are to keep to or even about how realistic people are about what they want to achieve or are capable of achieving it is about what they are about. The substance of the resolutions.

To get fit

To lose weight

To do some studying

Change jobs

To drink less or detox more

To eat healthily...

Yes I find they are a million and one things that people may decide will improve their lives but almost all do not apply to the emotional side of life. In fact in so many ways it feels that the world does not see emotional growth as an achievement or even something that you might want to strive for, well unless you're a child. So do adults see it as a weakness if you start talking about how to improve your emotional well-being?

Couldn't rightly say myself all I really see is that people do not talk about it and partly I feel this because it is not so easy to see improvement or to gauge if something has been successful. Something I think we all need to encourage us along.

The other side is that to talk about your emotional well-being feels very personal in a way that to talk about academics or jobs or health and fitness, doesn't so much. 

I guess many people would say that this is stigma at work but then I am not just talking about improving someone’s mental health out of illness. I am talking about every day improvements to your well-being. How to become more happy and content with things and to be more resilient to what life throws at you. This is not illness or recovery this is general well-being improvement and people just don’t seem to talk about it. In fact we just don’t seem to even set personal goals to improve these things unless we dress it up as something else.

And the reality is that it’s not like there aren't course, or courses of actions that aren't known to improve your well-being but really it seems such a low priority and yet with so many people now struggling with work, relationships and life in general it seems the perfect time to consider them as well.

I have to say that having been ill for a while my life has been full of the more practical resolutions such as doing the housework regularly, cooking meals and taking exercise and to be honest although these are definitely very good aims they have not really addressed the reason why I wasn't doing these things and most of these are about my emotional well-being. They are about how well I cope with my fears, or upset, how I relate to others and how often I get upset or scared.

And the reality for me and many of the people I know is that to achieve these everyday things I am neglecting the other emotional needs and the work I need to do on them in preference of becoming a fully functioning adult and member of society which largely focuses on cleaning, cooking, exercise and getting a job.
Really I think you are missing the point. When my emotional side is dealing and coping with what is going on internally then the other issues come right without the need for very inflexible goals, with punishment and reward systems to motivate me to do things, because ultimately I want to do these things but my emotions need to be sorted out, satisfied, understood and dealt with before I can.

So why are the goals that I need to achieve the ones that no one really wants to talk about when they are so instrumental in my achieving a good standard of well-being?

Well the simple answer I think is that these goals are not simple, easy or have obvious courses of action to reap results and they take far more time to achieve.

So as New years resolutions are about changing my life for the better I think at least this year I will be resolving to help my emotional side. To be less lonely, less isolated and to get closer to the people I know and hopefully meet and make friends with some more people.

And I would love to hear what are you going to do for yourself?