Cheers to New Year’s resolutions

Many people say that New Year’s resolutions are a deception and that nobody can accomplish them. To me, the start of the new year has been many times the mark for great changes.

Towards the end of 2014 I decided to quit consuming animal products, 5 years prior to that I had given up of eating meat and in the beginning of 2015 I quit eating fish and then the eggs and dairy. In February I was already eating a 100% plant based diet and, along that same year, I gathered more information to find out what other daily products contain animal source ingredients or exploited animals in some way (such as products tested on animals) until I finally stopped consuming all of them. It has been 4 years since I took that new year’s resolution and it was one of the best decisions of my life.

In the end of 2017 I decided to quit smoking but this time I determined that I would allow some exceptions in events that I consider really important and in which I feel like smoking a couple cigarettes. But they had to be real exceptions, otherwise I could see myself smoking every weekend and every time I had a dinner with friends. Friend’s weddings, my birthday party and the New Year’s Eve would be my exceptions. In November I did not smoke. In the beginning of December I attended a wedding and that’s when I opened an exception. The cigarettes I smoked during that day tasted great, yet the next day I had cough and a bad taste sensation in my mouth that wouldn’t go away even after brushing my teeth and tongue. On the New Year’s Eve I smoked again but as a matter of fact, in every cigarette I lighted up, I kept searching for the pleasure I once felt while smoking but couldn’t find it this time. This made me smoke way too much throughout that night, and on the following morning I had a sore throat and rough mouth. The truth is that, despite I had never thought about definitely quit smoking, in 2018 I didn’t feel like opening exceptions to any opportunity. Once again I accomplished my New Year’s resolution and am very grateful for that.

This year I have decided that in 2019 I will not drink any alcoholic beverage. There are many reasons why I’m making this decision but the main one is pure curiosity. I have been reading about the effects alcohol has in the microbiome, I know it sets back many of the liver functions, let alone the hangovers on the day after or even the loss of control that make me regret drinking so much. I have such curiosity in finding out what effects does the alcohol really has on my body. Since I have been drinking alcoholic beverages for quite a long time, with some regularity (2 to 10 glasses every week), the only way of knowing those effects on my body is to quit the alcohol consumption for a long period of time and analyse the changes.

I feel like socially it will be challenging. In contrary to the tobacco, that is already universally recognised as harmful to our health, alcohol (as well as coffee and sugar) is still a social accepted drug. I have experienced going countercurrent in some lifestyle features and therefore have felt on my own skin how disturbed some people feel when you say that you don’t do things the way they think they’re supposed to be done. However I decided not to build up expectations nor try to predict what reactions will be triggered by this change. Instead I will observe and analyse what happens and in one year from now I’ll tell you how this experience went, both on a social and personal level. What do you reckon?

Back to the resolutions: Do you make any New Year’s resolutions? Why do you think you cannot accomplish them? Or in contrary, if you do accomplish them, what makes it successful?

From my experience I think that in order to accomplish a New Year’s resolution, it needs to:

• Have a strong reason behind it — if you do not have strong reasons to make something happen, the more likely is for you to give up when the first obstacles show up;
• Have specific deadlines — drinking less alcoholic beverages or work out more times it’s not very precise, deadlines help to focus on the goal;
• Be realistic — if it isn’t something really possible to achieve, or something that depends on many factors that you cannot control, then it will be more difficult for you to accomplish.

For me the great advantage of New Year’s resolutions are the challenges. By creating a resolution I’m challenging myself to change things which I consider important to have a better life, be happier or simply to prove to myself that I’m able to do so. The feeling of getting towards the end of the year with one more accomplished resolution is very rewarding. In fact, throughout the year we make promises (personal and professional) to more or less people, but those we make to ourselves tend to be the ones we don’t meet. New Year’s resolutions are not more than a promise or commitment with our future self and I venture to say that those kind of promises should always be our priorities.

What is your resolution to this new year?