A brand new year for improvements...

I've been gone since late August, and in that time I took a two month trip to Europe, and then it was Christmas.  Why no blogs from old Blighty or la Belle France?  Blogs are for reflections, foreign travel is for eating.  I had to choose.  But I'm back now, and the misty Vancouver climate is making me all thoughtful again.

It’s January first.  My first thoughts go to what I should do to improve myself.  But these are my first thoughts every day.  I asked myself today why this day is different from any other, and of course the answer is that its name and number give a sense of a fresh start.  I downloaded a new tool for this sort of thing, called WOOP, (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) developed by a researcher who discovered that it turns out that just wishing for stuff doesn’t make it happen.  That will be a terrible blow to all those kids trying out for American Idol. 

The principle is that people who are more successful wish for things and then right away think of the obstacle, and begin to think of a plan work around the obstacle.  unfortunately my obstacles themselves are problematic: ‘bone idle’, ‘love bagels’ .  I’m imagining all these stellar people who have real obstacles.  Look at Steve Hawking, wish: to understand the universe and lecture and write books about it.  Obstacle: can’t speak or move limbs.

That’s it…I see all now! My obstacles are not big enough. You notice that an obstacle I listed for losing weight is ‘love bagels’.  A huger obstacle would be ‘love donuts’, only I hate donuts.  It hardly seems worth trying to overcome a bagel.

Another one of my goals was to meditate a few minutes each day.  On the days I do it I always feel more centred, and don't bark at my loved ones, but does feeling better after doing it make me want to do it? No.  It makes me want to have done it.  That’s where the ‘bone idle’ comes in.  I’d rather take my morning cup of tea and settle in to read the paper.

 I mean I don’t ask much of myself.  8 minutes of counting my breath and telling my noisy, demanding thoughts to bugger off.  I have all the necessaries to hand.  My Meditation for Dummies book, which contains so much information that I am paralyzed by it, my iPhone 6 to time me (the new big one with a fabulous red silicon coat on it, oo…was that a message bing?…bugger off iPhone thoughts!) and a quiet place, and I discovered recently that I can still sit cross-legged.  Apparently this is important, because people in all the pictures do it.  

What other goals do I have? To do the physio to make my knees stronger.  I still live in the magical world where I believe that knowing something is the same as doing it.  My phyisiotherapist  has given me fabulous exercises, along with a warning that if I don’t make the muscles that support my knees stronger, they will be like sphaghetti inside a couple of years.  If I close my eyes, I see myself doing them, and then going on to win American Idol.

So why is it so hard? I’m a human, and I believe we have been programmed for 200,000 years to conserve the little energy we have so we can survive.  I’m not sure we should be squandering our strength trying to avoid bagels.  So even though I have Nike shouting in my head to just do it, it’s just easier not to.