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December 31, 2008

New Years Resolutions You Should Really Consider

I've poked some fun at the typical new year's resolutions, but I can be more constructive than that.  What kind of new year's resolutions should you & I make this year?

Let's assume becoming rich and famous, or an Adonis; world peace, being perfect, and enjoying a happy, stress free life are resolutions you've already ruled out.  If you're going after those, great, lets talk next year about how you fared.  It would be wonderful to hear of your success.

If those kind of resolutions have left you jaded in the past, you might consider something else.  Here are some resolutions with proven pedigree I am considering.  These are resolutions, not goals, so they are phrased as something you can stick in your mind and remind yourself of at the proper time.  These resolutions never expire, nor can you fail them; you win every time you remember them in the coming year.

New Year Resolutions for 2009
  • Be here now
  • Listen more deeply
  • Exercise your mind
  • Exercise your heart
  • Love the ones you love
  • Do what you can do now
  • Know what you want before you take what you can get *
  • Walk and do push-ups **

Dealexpert will talk about knowing what you want before you take what you can get, as that is an essential subject in negotiating, even if you are only negotiating with yourself.

Walking and doing push-ups?  That is all anyone needs to stay fit and it is within the grasp of 99% of everyone without spending a dime.  You can forgo the Thigh Master, gym membership or any of the other neat fitness gimmicks.  Doubt me?  Find your proof at my daily blog Eric Walkers Push where I'll log my daily activity, and report weight & blood pressure.  Book mark that blog now!  I'm neither a Spring chicken nor small boned, unlike Subway's Jared, so if I can do it, so can you!

I am shying away from including prioritizing one's daily activities,as we all know we should do this.  I think it amounts to making a daily list of everything important, then tearing off and throwing away the bottom half.  Use the time you saved to do something good for yourself, or for others or spend the time just enjoying life in an active way.

Happy New Year,


Eric Pederson
@dealexpert 


Notes
Tip of the hat to Greg Pressler who signed thousands of emails "Love the ones you love" over the years.  He is probably running or riding a bicycle 100 miles right now, or enjoying his loved ones.  

And a tip of the hat to Ironman Champion Dave Scott who has shared his "Do what you can do now" crisis management racing advice with many triathletes to great benefit in races, and in life!


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Worlds Greatest Soccer blogs: Attacking 90 Soccer Blog & American Soccer News 
The Fitness blog for real people: Eric Walkers Push

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December 29, 2008

Winning the New Year Resolutions Game

Let's jump right into it, shall we?  Or shall I tell you about the man who once resolved to marry his cat off?  More on that in a moment.


Let's examine what 123NewYear tells us the ten most common New Year's resolutions are:

1. Enjoy Life (No Worries)
2. Reach office on time
3. Spend time with friends and family
4. Go for Trips & Outings
5. Keep House Clean
6. Quit Drinking & Smoking
7. Say no to junk food
8. Buy & Read Books
9. Workout & Exercise
10. Write Diary  

Tell me these sound promising!  No they don't, seriously.

  1. Certainly you could enjoy life, if you could just stop worrying, but how can you do that when you've got new year resolutions on your back.  Scrap that one right away, it is never going to happen.
  2. Getting to the office on time is a great discipline, unfortunately it takes discipline which rules out the very people who need to make up a new year's resolution about it.  Forget it. And this year why make the effort to get to work on time only to get a pink slip?  Sucker!  That's adding insult to injury.
  3. Spending time with friends and family is one that might just work out, after you lose that pesky job that keeps you away from them.  Funny thing, not that you get ornery when you are out of work, but the more free time you have, the more urgent engagements your friends and family have that keeps them from hanging out with you. Face it - in relationships, water finds its own level, and lets just hope that's water.
  4. Going for trips and outings is all a matter of perspective, so you can always achieve this one.  Visiting your brother in law in jail: was that not an outing?   And that time the misses cooked with those funny mushrooms she found growing out back?  Certainly that was one heck of a trip!  Frankly all life is an adventure, so if you make it to 2010 you'll have accomplished this one, but you don't need to write it down, do you?
  5. Keeping the house clean.  I always wonder about this, perhaps being a male: what is the frequency requirement?  I almost certainly clean the house more than once a year, on the other hand if this means never letting any items get out of place, well, that's a condition for a psychiatrist to treat.  Which I probably won't be able to afford when I'm out of work and trying to force my family and friends into spending more time with me.
  6. Quit drinking and smoking.  Like the man with the cat did?  And lose all the skills amassed in years of practice?  Well perhaps this is a good idea, in half: it might be good to quit drinking OR smoking, but not both.  What would I do with my hands and mouth and how much trouble would that get me into?
  7. Saying no to junk food is something I think most of us already do.  Certainly I can recall saying no to junk food just this evening when the lady asked if that was my complete order.  You can talk yourself out of junk food as I do daily, but if you find yourself in proximity, you're a goner in a split second.  Junk food is engineered to be irresistible to homo sapiens, which is bad news if you're human.  Instead of saying no you might want to spend a month in the space shuttle isolated from junk food, enjoying Tang.  Good luck with that.
  8. Buy and read books, OK, I think Amazon slipped this one in there, do people really make this a resolution?  Most of the books you can buy are outdated by the time they arrive on your doorstep in this information age.  You can buy books, but with out of work friends and family trying to spend "quality time" pestering you, how can you ever finish them?  I usually end up out on the porch with a bottle in one hand, a cigarette dangling from my mouth, and my other hand on a .38 wondering what to shoot.  Still, I've been meaning to catch up on my reading of outdated information, so perhaps you are too.
  9. Workout and Exercise is kind of like cleaning, frequency needs are debatable.  I like to take care of it on the first day of the year so that I can check it off.  January 1st is wonderful like this: went jogging, cleaned house, took my chips, beer, and smokes to the couch to watch the game and fell asleep.
  10. Write a diary?  If your life is anything like mine, it's a risky proposition, besides the potential incarceration should the diary be discovered, there is the guilt that would accompany anyone reading it and committing suicide, or worse: it would provide proof in 365 days as to how in accomplishing new year's resolutions, the life nevertheless stayed the same.
For the record, I never once resolved to marry my cat off, it's all a unsubstantiated rumor and possibly a lie.  No tom cat I know could ever come up with a suitable dowry, and I'm not sure I ever offered her paw anyway.

How do you win the New Year resolutions game?  Maybe by knowing yourself, first, and resolving every morning to work on that one thing critical to you.

While you sit in traffic, late to work.

/EP


Next up: Three New Year Resolutions for America

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