How many people who promised to stop
eating chocolate or smoking cigarettes, on New Year’s Eve, have since eaten
chocolate or smoked?
Lots.
It happens every year. Most people fail
to keep their New Year’s Resolutions, only to make them again twelve months
later, and fail again a few days later.
The top ten New Year’s Resolutions
are:
Lose weight
Stop smoking
Stick to a budget
Save or earn more money
Find a better job
Become more organized
Exercise more
Be more patient at work/with others
Eat better
Become a better person
In each case, the traditional way of
achieving the desired goal is by forcing a change in ones behaviour.
Unfortunately, that fails to take into account why the behaviour is there in the
first place. Whilst one still has the motivation for the old behaviour, trying
to force oneself into a new behaviour is a peculiar kind of self-imposed
torture. It is probably a good thing that people give up torturing themselves
before they do lasting damage.
People over-eat, or smoke, because they
want to. Most people do not smoke. Non-smokers are all capable of putting a
cigarette in their mouth, lighting and sucking at it but they do not, because
they do not want to. No one forces a smoker to light a cigarette. Smokers smoke,
and cannot stop smoking, because they want to smoke more than they want to stop.
Sitting on your hands when every nerve
and fibre in your body craves a cake or a fag is a behavioural nightmare. To eat
sensibly, or to stop smoking, or wasting money, or to get fit, you have to
change the way you think.
Change the way you think, and the way
you behave will follow as an unavoidable consequence.
Interestingly, there is no particular
reason why we should subject ourselves to this tortuous reconditioning at this
particular time of the year. January 1st has not always been
considered as the beginning of the New Year, and still is not in some societies.
The tradition of celebrating the
beginning of a new year goes back about 4,000 years to ancient
January 1st has no
agricultural or astronomic significance and is an arbitrary contrivance that
dates back to the
Even so, tinkering with the calendar
continued. Christians in the Middle Ages moved New Year’s Day to December 25th
to mark Christ’s birth, and then to March 25th, the Feast of
Annunciation, being nine months before Christ’s birth and, therefore, the
beginning of the Virgin Mary’s gestation.
The Julian calendar had 365 days plus
leap years, as we are familiar with today. It had a small discrepancy, however,
which meant it gained about seven days every 1000 years. In 1582, Pope Gregory
XIII decided to remedy the situation as, by then, there was a ten day error to
correct.
The solution was devised by a Jesuit
astronomer called Christopher Clavius. He determined that the error could be
resolved by maintaining a leap year every four years, except for century years
which are not multiples of 400. So, whilst 1896 and 1904 were leap years, 1900
was not.
In order to lose the problematic ten
days,
The Gregorian calendar returned New
Year’s Day to January 1st, once again.
Now, in the 21st century, at
a time of no particular spiritual, practical or astronomic significance, on and
after a date that has been moved by Emperors, Popes and politicians for reasons
ranging from vanity to orderliness, thousands of people impose on themselves a
miserable start to their new year by trying to change their behaviour, without
first changing their mind.
How silly.
If your New Year's Resolve has already dissolved and you want some help, clinical hypnotism might be an option for you.
For enquiries and appointments call 020 8948 2439
or email bt@mindsci-clinic.com