We don’t have to wait until the year is over to change things, to do things. We can change things, we can do things every day. Every single day of the year. If something goes wrong (or even if you did something wrong), fix it! (Maybe apologize.) Work on it. If you’re not getting where you want to be: Try again. You may have just one life (we don’t know that, but this could be the case), but you have a million tries in that single one. And trying is nothing else then practicing! Every master needs practice (actually a lot of it! If you really want to master something, you might have to do nothing else but that thing).
And there’s the thing: where practicing helds no bad thoughts for us (ok, ok, for all the couchpotatoes among us, it sounds like work, and sweat, and discipline, and pain, and so on …), trying always seems to have implicit failure with it. It was Yoda (if you don’t know who Yoda is, google it! And then watch the Star Wars movies, all of them!) who said:
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
I do agree with him. Because trying seems week. Not self confident. It sounds like an apology. “I try it, but don’t be mad at me if I won’t get it done.” But when you didn’t even started, you didn’t really tried and trying can be so good! We can try new things (I personally love that, but some people really hate it). No matter what. Food, sports, even to behave other I normally do. Why not having an opposite day? Just do the opposite of everything you do (or normally do). Take another way to work than normally, maybe by train, bike or even foot or maybe just turn left instead of right. Trying out something also brings surprise. You can surprise people by behaving differently, you can also surprise yourself (maybe you like it?). Only if you check out new things, you really know why you like the old ones and maybe, just maybe, you start to like the newones more. Or just the feeling to find out something new! Maybe even something new about yourself!
Trying really isn’t so bad at all. Trying again also means not giving up. And even if you have to try again a thousand times, you really don’t have to be ashamed, I mean hey, you tryed a thousand times! Alone this fact makes you a master of everything. No one is good at everything. Is that a reason to not do it? No. You should do the things you really want to. But with all things you do, do them temperately. Ok, ok, I know what I said before about the true master and that he might have to do just one thing. But there is more than just one thing to explore. And for most of us it is also to late to be the master because we would have to start from childhood on (luckily this isn’t true for everything, but seems for some like music instruments). And what if one day there comes somebody else who is better than you? Was all the work for nothing? Will your life be worthless because of that? Do you have to be the best? And don’t forget, you really have to love the one thing more than everything else to do just that. Temperately is healthier and gives you more time for more things to do.
Nevertheless new year is a good point to stop and reflect. What was good and what not? As in every critic we should never forget the good parts! There is never ever all bad! Look at the good parts to! Look at how much you did in a year! I’m sure there was much every one of us has done, has achieved last year. But surely also look at the things that were not working out. But don’t be sad or mad about it. Just analyze why they didn’t work out. What does have to change, that they do work out? What can you do to change how they work out? What will you loose if they work out? What will you gain? And what do you want to change about your work, about yourself. In the end the one thing we really can change is ourself. So that’s where we have to start.
So why do I really like new years resolutions again? Most people don’t. Most people think they are not working out and I thought that too for a very long time. But for me this was true, because I didn’t want to fail. But there is nothing wrong with failure. Failure shows you tried. Trying again needs courage. Sometimes more than the first try, because you know now what can go wrong. But also makes you better, because you know now what can go wrong. I looked this great science fiction film with Tom Cruise, “Edge of Tomorrow”, on New Year’s Eve, which shows really great what trying means. Ok, we don’t have a nice time loop to be perfect at some point, but we have more time than we think. There is so much wasted time, so much unused time. I read a book today and I thought I didn’t have time to read a book for the last months. But I did have time to watch TV. It’s all about priorities and decions. I’m not one of those guys who think TV is all bad, but there is a lot of stupid things shown in TV. A lot of things I don’t have to see (like some cat videos online I’m forced to watch, because one of my friend posted it on facebook and facebook now starts immediately playing the damn videos! But at least the cat video cheered me up!). I really love movies, because there are some great movies worth seeing! But again it’s about temperate. Do I have to watch TV all the time? Do I have to play a video game the whole day? What could I do instead? What do I want to do? What do I want to achieve? Whatevere it is, start now, fail and try again and best of it, never stop unless you want to try out something new. Even if it is watching a movie or playing a video game.
That book I read made me thinking, actually it is “Vegan for fit” from Attila Hildmann. He wrote, he was a heavy player and just thought about if he wants to live a virtual or a real life. And computer games are not so different from life. You have to play a lot to get better. We have to try a lot! They can be fun, but they can also become compulsory. I know that very well. If it is fun, do it. I’m really none of the persons who thinks bad about computer games either. But they can hook you up. If the fun is gone, stop it. Or do it they way you have fun with it. But like the start screen on World of Warcraft tells you on some days:
“Bring your friends to Azeroth, but don’t forget to go outside Azeroth with them as well.”
So what is the one thing you want to try out in 2015? I myself want to try out vegan. That’s why I bought the book of Attila Hildmann and some others. Why? Because I have to learn that as a lactose intolerant person I don’t have to resign on anything. I always thought I have to, but this is not true as I learned from the vegans. They seemed to resign on even more than I but they don’t look so grumpy as I do. And it is also good for health and weight, for the animals and the world and so on. But I think thats one good reason for myself I want to try it out. And if I help the world, the animals and my health and weight with it, all the better. And if I don’t like it or don’t want to keep doing it, of whatever reason, I will stop it again.
And what happens to all the new year resolutions of last year? The ones I didn’t achieve, I keep. The ones, I like doing on, I keep. The ones I mastered, I keep anyways. The ones I just forced myself into, the ones I don’t want to do by heart, I repeal. But I don’t have many of these the last years. But the shorter the list and the shorter the formulation of the single points, the better to keep them.
I actually had done a new year resolutions list for the last two years. The first one was very simple:
- Quit smoking
- Eat healthy
- Do sports
- Start learning chinese again and pass the first chinese HSK exam
- Spend less
The next one was a bit longer and more differentiated, but had the very same points.
- Still don’t smoke
- Work on eating behavior
- Stop eating when saturated. Better to ladle more than once than once too much and eating up. I don’t have to eat up, I can warm it again when hungry (even on the next day)
- Stop pilfer food, but allowing myself some eating sins
- One fruit a day
- Do sports regularly
- One or two sport courses a week
- One or two endurance sports a week
- Walk to work on all work ways or do them by bike
- Pass the first chinese HSK exam.
- Set a budget for goodies. Write down all spendings on extras.
I didn’t manage everything. I’m still very poor on the 5th point and didn’t achieve the 4th point entirely in the first year. I managed to write down the extra spendings until may. I learned that there is a nice app doing this that might help me. It was just one solution for a problem i have and using Excel might not be the best way doing it. But what was the name of that app again?
I still don’t smoke and where the first year I really missed it sometimes (I wasn’t a heavy smoker before though luckily, I smoked only in good company or related with drinking alcohol), I didn’t miss it at all in this second year. I don’t even have to be proud of myself, because I really think, this is the best way for myself, because I really don’t need to smoke. But I’m in the lucky position that smoking never was one of my hard tasks. You might not, so don’t be offended by me easily quitting it. There are other things I can’t quit so easy. It’s not that I’m the master of quitting or so.
I really practiced on my eating behavior like trying not to eat up which was much more easier in restaurants than at home. Stupid me! In the restaurant the food gets thrown away whereas at home I could just eat it on the next day! But I didn’t manage that so well. I also read some books about eating behavior like attentive eating. But when I get exhausted, which is normally the case in the second half of the year, it goes all down to hell. I will have to face it, I will have to keep the eating point in my resolutions until end of life. But some good news, one fruit a day is of course to generally formulated and I couldn’t manage this all days, but I did on most days. I really eat a lot of fruits and I recognized I like them! And I didn’t think, I liked them, before, because I didn’t like them as a child. That teached me that it is also a good idea to try out something again. We all change and don’t like the same things forever.
The sports point really worked out great. I went to work by bike from March until October. I bought six train tickets and thought I would have used them in the first month but actually I didn’t have to buy new ones until I quit in november. I also did most of my private ways by bike, visiting friends, going shopping and so on. I went jogging twice up to six days a week. I took yoga and jazz dance lessons every week. But for the last month, in december, I didn’t do anything as far as yoga. I stopped jazz dance for my chinese lessons and it was too cold for jogging or too dark in the evening. And I didn’t have time and energy. Nothing of that didn’t bother me the year before where I even went jogging when it was all snowy.
But I passed the first and even second chinese HSK exam! And hey, I wrote a whole book this year!
As I said I want to hold on to my resolutions. I don’t have to take many new resolutions every year, I like more working on with the very things I want to change and they might take longer. This hasn’t to be boring, because I can give myself new tasks within the topic. Like trying out vegan which is related to the whole eating topic. And all the topics might not be so easy to achieve, because I’m going for 4 month to china this year and this alone holds a lot of challenges for myself!
I also try – do! – to work on some personality issues. Some habits I don’t like. A little reprogramming. And how is reprogramming done? Practice, practice every day, try, fail, try fail!
But today as a start I took a yoga and pilates lesson, read a book and wrote this blog post instead of sleeping all day, watching TV and gaming World of Warcraft. I apologize to all the people on Azeroth counting on me. I know you understand that. And if not, so what? There are enough players registered already! And I will surely come back for some hours to play this month.
With these words I wish you all a thousand tries for 2015, try also out something new and don’t be afraid to fail!
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