New Year Resolutions
Urban Eco Jan 4, 2016
by Janette Ward
Dear Urbanites,
I hope you are well. This month in keeping with the turn of the New Year, I would like to share about New Year’s Resolutions.
They are a tradition in which a person makes a promise to do or not do something in order to accomplish a goal or break a habit. It comes at a time when people look back at the past year and make an effort to improve themselves in the coming year.
The making of New Year Resolutions has religious origins as far back as the Babylonians, when they made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts.
The Romans also began each year making promises to the god Janus from whom the month of January is named.
Research shows that of all the people who make New Year’s Resolutions only between 8-12% successfully achieve them. One of the top tips to help achieve New Year’s Resolutions is to only make one resolution. Your chances are greater when you channel energy into changing just one aspect of your behaviour.
Urban Eco Jan 4, 2016
by Janette Ward
Dear Urbanites,
I hope you are well. This month in keeping with the turn of the New Year, I would like to share about New Year’s Resolutions.
They are a tradition in which a person makes a promise to do or not do something in order to accomplish a goal or break a habit. It comes at a time when people look back at the past year and make an effort to improve themselves in the coming year.
The making of New Year Resolutions has religious origins as far back as the Babylonians, when they made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts.
The Romans also began each year making promises to the god Janus from whom the month of January is named.
Research shows that of all the people who make New Year’s Resolutions only between 8-12% successfully achieve them. One of the top tips to help achieve New Year’s Resolutions is to only make one resolution. Your chances are greater when you channel energy into changing just one aspect of your behaviour.
I would like to make a suggestion that your one resolution might be to look after yourself. In my experience most people are loving and caring and often good at looking after other people but not as good at looking after themselves.
We are often brought up to believe that looking after ourselves or putting ourselves first makes us selfish. I would like to reclaim the word selfish and instead use the word self-care. After years of personal experience, as well as working with many caring and hardworking people, I’ve learned that when we care for ourselves deeply and deliberately, we naturally begin to care for others in a healthier and more effective way. We become conscious and conscientious people, making choices from a place of love and compassion instead of guilt and obligation.
Caring for ourselves takes patience, commitment and practice. It initially requires a willingness to sit with some pretty uncomfortable feelings, such as guilt for putting your own needs first; fear of being judged and criticized by others or anxiety from challenging long-held beliefs and behaviours.
A wonderful and simple book that helped me to consider looking after myself in simple yet really meaningful ways is One Minute For Yourself by Spencer Johnson, he invites the reader to take an extra minute for yourself during the day to stop and ask ‘Is there a way, right now, for me to take better care of myself?’ As Spencer Johnson says it’s the little things that make the big differences to us – things no-one else would notice.
To look after myself, I meditate each day and this helps me to stay in touch with how I feel and what I need. I eat foods I enjoy that nourish me, I ensure I get plenty sleep, spend time with loving, positive people. I have a regular massage, do yoga, read, walk in nature, spending time by the sea and lots of other things that make me feel good.
I’d like to invite you to consider when you last did something to look after yourself? And what do you do to look after yourself? Perhaps make a list.
When we look after ourselves, it helps to build resilience, improves our relationship with ourselves and others, strengthens our self-esteem, so that we do not feel the need to compare ourselves with others, so that our opinion of ourselves is more important than others opinion of us. When we take better care of ourselves we begin to accept ourselves. This is not about being big-headed or arrogant, it is about having a healthy self-respect, about feeling good enough.
Once you have a healthy self-respect it can foster feelings of being able to cope with whatever happens in life.
Finally I wish you all every happiness and success in 2016.
We are often brought up to believe that looking after ourselves or putting ourselves first makes us selfish. I would like to reclaim the word selfish and instead use the word self-care. After years of personal experience, as well as working with many caring and hardworking people, I’ve learned that when we care for ourselves deeply and deliberately, we naturally begin to care for others in a healthier and more effective way. We become conscious and conscientious people, making choices from a place of love and compassion instead of guilt and obligation.
Caring for ourselves takes patience, commitment and practice. It initially requires a willingness to sit with some pretty uncomfortable feelings, such as guilt for putting your own needs first; fear of being judged and criticized by others or anxiety from challenging long-held beliefs and behaviours.
A wonderful and simple book that helped me to consider looking after myself in simple yet really meaningful ways is One Minute For Yourself by Spencer Johnson, he invites the reader to take an extra minute for yourself during the day to stop and ask ‘Is there a way, right now, for me to take better care of myself?’ As Spencer Johnson says it’s the little things that make the big differences to us – things no-one else would notice.
To look after myself, I meditate each day and this helps me to stay in touch with how I feel and what I need. I eat foods I enjoy that nourish me, I ensure I get plenty sleep, spend time with loving, positive people. I have a regular massage, do yoga, read, walk in nature, spending time by the sea and lots of other things that make me feel good.
I’d like to invite you to consider when you last did something to look after yourself? And what do you do to look after yourself? Perhaps make a list.
When we look after ourselves, it helps to build resilience, improves our relationship with ourselves and others, strengthens our self-esteem, so that we do not feel the need to compare ourselves with others, so that our opinion of ourselves is more important than others opinion of us. When we take better care of ourselves we begin to accept ourselves. This is not about being big-headed or arrogant, it is about having a healthy self-respect, about feeling good enough.
Once you have a healthy self-respect it can foster feelings of being able to cope with whatever happens in life.
Finally I wish you all every happiness and success in 2016.