Did you make any New Year Resolutions? If you did, what influenced you on deciding what to do? I\u2019d wager that it was related to making you healthier or improving your wellbeing in some way. I never make New Year Resolutions \u2013 I find it far too pressurised. Also, keeping to January as the time to do this seems to be a barrier to making changes at any time in the year.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s get back to you. If you did make any resolutions, are you still managing to keep up with the new routines? There is actually a day recognised as the point where the majority of people will have given up on their New Year Resolutions: 17 January<\/a>. This year it\u2019s the day before Blue Monday<\/a>. Blue Monday is so named because it is thought to be the saddest day of the year, \u2018due to a combination of bad weather, long nights and the lingering aftermath of the festive glut\u2019. In addition, it falls at the point a long way from pay day because we all get paid early in December because of Christmas.<\/p>\n In case you\u2019re still wondering about whether you should consider a lifestyle change to enhance your life, I\u2019d like to make a few less recognised suggestions.<\/p>\n Enhance Your Mental Strength: <\/u><\/strong>this will not involve you pumping iron but may require the intellectual or emotional equivalent. For help with this, I\u2019d like to recommend an article by Nick Wignall, who is an American clinical psychologist. Put simply, Nick writes that mental strength is the ability to control your mind instead of being controlled by it. He suggests three ways to do this: be honest about how you feel emotionally; resist unnecessary mental time travel; and distinguish wants vs values. If you want to learn more, you can access his article via the link below.<\/p>\n Improve Your Rationality: <\/u><\/strong>this is the suggestion of Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard University.\u00a0 He writes that in order to do this, the best approach is to avoid three basic \u2018irrationality traps\u2019. These are: \u2018Future You\u2019, when people weigh up the difference between immediate and long term gains when making a decision; the second trap is looking for patterns among random occurrences and attributing too much significance to those observations; the third is the need to be right or get something right and the pressure that brings. To learn more, follow the link to the BBC article below.<\/p>\n Consider the Simple, the Obvious and the Outrageous!: <\/u><\/strong>for this please just read the article below by The Guardian\u2019s Saturday Magazine Team. It\u2019s entitled \u2018100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying\u2019. I can guarantee you will find at least one suggestion in it that appeals to you. The advice goes from the easy and banal, for example, \u2018Bring fruit to work. (Bring fruit to bed!)\u2019 and \u2018Sharpen your knives\u2019 to the life-changing, \u2018Consider going down to four days a week. It\u2019s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day\u2019s work is taxed anyway, so you\u2019ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay,\u2019 through the wise, \u2018On the fence about a purchase? Wait 72 hours before you buy it,\u2019 to the whacky, \u2018Always bring ice to house parties (there\u2019s never enough)\u2019. And all those examples are only in the first 12 suggestions so you can imagine how interesting and entertaining they are! My favourites are \u2018Keep a bird feeder by a window, ideally the kitchen. It\u2019ll pass the time when you\u2019re washing up,\u2019 and \u2018Read a poem every day. Keep a compendium, such as \u201cA Poem for Every Day of the Year\u201d, by your bed.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u20183 Habits That Will Make You Mentally Strong\u2019<\/a> on Nick Wignall\u2019s blog on his website, nickwignall.com<\/p>\n \u2018Three ways to be more rational this year\u2019<\/a> by Professor Steven Pinker, article on bbc.co.uk<\/p>\n