It's past New Years so about now is when everyone has started giving up on their 'New Years resolutions.' I have always found New Years resolutions to be a bit of a joke myself. I get the whole 'fresh start' thing with a new year but honestly, if it's something you really wanted to change then it doesn't matter what day it is, you would do it. Lack of motivation appears to be one huge issue with people changing. But whenever New Years comes around, everyone is doing it so it's easier to jump on the bandwagon. This is what I think of as false motivation. When you sit there and have to ask yourself "why am I doing this again?" then odds are you're not gonna stick to it for long.
One of the other huge issues I've heard from many friends, myself included, is not knowing what to change but knowing something has to. Dieting, exercise, procrastination, etc are all easy to figure out and to know how to work toward change. It's the personal development things that are harder. These are my own personal thoughts with no expertise backing them up. What is right and works for me may very well not work for others. So the following should be taken with a grain or two of salt.
Last semester in December I had to proctor 2 hour and a half exams in one day. Proctoring doesn't take much brain power and left me to thinking about things I needed to change. The long duration yielded a long list. What I found was a theme of hypocrisy/ pet peeves. Basically stated: If something irks the hell out of me why is it something I practice that probably irks the hell out of others. On a side note, it irks me as well that I do thinks that irk me. So why has it taken me so long to figure that out??
I don't keep a list of personal pet peeves. When I'm asked what my number one is, it's not usually the same. It all depends on the day and time and what has happened recently. What I've done instead is engage. I am surrounded by a wide variety of people with very varied backgrounds. I get to experience a wide array of behavior every day. Over the past couple months I have taken mental notes on interactions. When something happens that makes my hackles rise, my eyebrows raise in disgust or any other reaction I consider less than 'fine,' I think about it. I think about why I reacted that way. Was it just the specific person that caused it and if so I should maybe think about the nature of my relationship with them. Or is it the actual thing said or done? If it's the latter I then ask myself 'Do I do this same thing?' If the answer is yes in any way, shape, or form then I need to go look in the mirror for a while.
I'm not big on self help books or research about who you are affecting who you hang out with or what you look for in a significant other. I'm really good at finding exceptions to all those things. Rather I think of these things to change as what makes me happier with me, what makes me sleep easier, what makes me into someone I want to be. And unless you want to be a hypocrite, I don't see how perpetrating things you don't like can make your happier with yourself.
So now an anecdote, or a few, referring to how this whole thing works (for me). People talk how they talk, it's a fact. However 'umm,' 'like,' 'oh my god,' 'fuck my life,' and many more expressions should not be used as every day vocabulary in a conversation. This bugs the shit out of me. I am most guilty of 'I was gonna say. .' There are a few occasions this is warranted but most times I don't think it is. Deleting something from ones vocabulary is hard and when I catch myself it's sometimes half way through or I've already taken a breath, so it leads to a 'nevermind.' I'm also working on swearing but I think that's a losing battle on some fronts. Anyone that played volleyball with me last week knew when the ball was gonna go out of bounds early on just by me yelling 'fuck.' I will not be censoring my unique jargon, though, as I see nothing wrong with words such as 'ergo,' 'peachy keen,' 'wicked,' 'shit the bed,' 'ish,' and whatever else I deem as generational or regional vocabulary that people just have to deal with.
I am not a fan of people who, especially on facebook, constantly inform people that their life sucks or 'omg I hate everyone'. I have a certain personal belief and would like to run an experiment on these people asking them about the top 5 headlines in a newspaper not in the entertainment, sports or political section to see if they know other peoples definition of life sucking, you know fires, murders, natural disasters, countries collapsing, losing everything. That kind of life sucking. Yes, I understand life sucking is a relative thing to each person. And for some people it does. But when you say it every day, me as well as the general population tend to not believe it any more. For those that sympathize with them constantly and there by enable them, yes you annoy me, too. Though I do not find myself doing this much, I have made a more conscious effort to be wary of this. I have learned that people that truly care do not need to be informed something is wrong, they will know and they will ask. I was reminded of this last night, and thanks to those folks. Life does not suck simply because someone told a minor lie, you didn't get what you want, or things didn't go your way. That's just life. Every single person on this earth goes through that at some point. And yes the 5 day migraine I have right now sucks, but it's not the worst one I've ever had, I don't want to kill myself over it, and so what? Life gave me a lemon. So I'm gonna sit here in my room staring at it til it vanishes.
Another issue I've recently come to face is grudges. I don't like holding them and it annoys me when they are held against me for longer than necessary durations or without a substantial reason. I believe in what I call the Catholic version of forgive and forget (meaning I forgive but I don't forget) but that's another blog. Grudges take time and effort and only seem to hurt everyone involved. This one is slightly more personal. I knew about this grudge as long as it's been there, I even knew how it was affecting everyone involved. But after thinking about it, I decided I had to grow up and let it go. That's not to say it doesn't still hurt and I have forgotten it or even really forgiven anything the grudge was based on. I'm just trying to be a more mature person about it. It's a process though and sometimes I fail and sometimes I wanna act like a petulant 2 year old. But I try for the bettering of me and everyone I affected around me's sake to do this. This has been one of the hardest changes I have been working on but like I said, this one is also rather personal.
These are just a handful of examples of things I am working on changing but so far this is the first methodology I've stumbled on that makes sense to me. I'm tired of people saying 'look in the mirror and if you don't see what you like then change it.' Well that's a really broad concept and potentially the reason for so much cosmetic surgery. Most people can't figure out where to start when faced with looking in the mirror (figuratively or literally). I don't know where this idea came from, like I said I was monitoring students for cheating for 3 hours when the thought literally struck me 'huh why do I do that if when other people do that it annoys me?' It's a bit by bit process that takes a lot of work and is never really over. But I find that changing more or less because of the Golden Rule standard makes a hell of a lot more sense than 'Happy New Years!'
How bout you? Why would you make a change and how do you decide what to change?
