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ALL CHANGE FOR 2008
Is 2008 going to be the year you start salsa lessons or get your
Spanish up to scratch? Or could it be the time you drop a couple
of dress sizes or visit the Taj Mahal in moonlight or simply get
rid of your credit card debt?
There’s a magical feel about New Year - yet another opportunity
to reinvent yourself and make the life you want rather than the
one you’ve settled for after all these years. Too many people
though forget about their change their life resolutions ,
settling for business as usual way before Easter or even
earlier. It doesn’t have to be like that.
Jane Feinmann explains how to stay on the road to change.
BE PASSIONATE
Do whatever you resolve to do in 2008 as well as you can. Forget
about half an hour’s practice a week just before your flute
lesson or an occasional effort at French or jive. Worthwhile
hobbies require practice and lots of it. ‘Humans are made to
learn new skills,’ says. Dr Nick Baylis, author of Learning from
Wonderful Lives (Cambridge Well-Being 2007).
‘Learning a new skill is profoundly satisfying precisely because
our emotions, body and brain are hungry for learning. Just
remember how impossibly awkward driving a car felt until
coordination of hands and feet became a subconscious,
well-learnt response.’ Getting good at something is hugely
rewarding, he says. ‘It will give you confidence and team you up
with other passionate people.’
GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
Getting to be at good at managing finances, for instance, begins
with labour intensive tasks: recording shop-by-shop spending in
a notebook kept in your jacket pocket or handbook along with a
computer spreadsheet to keep accurate accounts. ‘It sounds
time-consuming and at first it will be,’ says financial coach,
Simonne Gnessen (
www.financial-coaching.co.uk ). ‘A new habit is by
definition not normal. It’s behaving outside our comfort zone.’
REALLY WANT IT
Lots of people fail to keep to their resolutions simply because
they lose track of them as every day life takes over, says
Simonne. She recommends a ‘dream board’: ‘sticking pictures on
the fridge or a notice-board of what you want: the beach in
France you want to visit, the amount of weight you want to lose,
a fictitious cheque written out in the amount you want to have
by the end of the year that will pay off your overdraft or buy
the house you want.
‘Nothing will change, she says, unless you really really want
it. ‘You have to believe with your whole being that the change
you want is going to happen and trust yourself that you can make
happen. We get what we expect much more than what we want.’
ENJOY IT
If the road to achieving a goal is going to be a long one, it
can still be enjoyable, says Dr Baylis – it must be or it won’t
work. ‘Trying to learn stuff while we’re in a grump or a gloom
is impossible. Good moods make hard tasks easier and it will
also embed the good mood along with the memory’.
MAKE TIME
‘Everyone has the same amount of time, it just depends on what
you do with it,’ says Christa Nicola, a personal trainer at
London’s Bodyism gym in South Kensington where the likes of Elle
MacPherson and Hugh Grant buff up their bodies.
‘one of my clients felt she didn’t have time to take a couple of
hours to travel to and from the running track so we decided that
she would take half an hour every other day and start running to
a park a couple of kilometres from her house. Anyone can find
that time.’
BALANCE YOUR LIFE
If your life is largely sedentary, choose a hobby that
counter-balances your working life: gardening, hill-walking,
sailing, the local hare and hounds or singing, suggests Dr
Baylis.
QUESTION TIME
Ask yourself the following/ OR Here are eight questions from Dr
Baylis to help you make your 2008 New Year resolutions.
1. Which personal
relationships do you wish to develop – from among your existing
ones and the ones you’ve not even begun yet?
2. What skills of mind and body would you most like to
learn –social, physical, personal and professional?
3. Where do you wish to visit – which cities, landscapes
and special places?
4. What new or rare experiences would you like to savour
– the social events, the emotional feelings, the physical
sensations?
5. In your favourite daydreams, what delightful things do
you most eagerly imagine?
6. What are the hobbies of your favourite characters from
films, novels and biographies?
7. If you found yourself on your deathbed but with
sufficient time to ponder and compose your thoughts, what things
would you most regret not having done in life?
8. If you had two years left to live, how would you spend
the time and who you choose to spend it with?
Further information
laterlife interest
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laterlife interest.
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