THE MENTAL SHIFT OF THE TURN OF A CALENDER

Hi there beautiful people. Sorry for the lengthened silence. Lets just say the holidays got me. I hope they have been nothing short of breathtaking on your end. But anyway, I have crawled back from the self-imposed silence exile and as usual have emerged with a thought nurtured by my time in darkness. Why is it that a new year elicits so much excitement and hope despite the fact that it is only a flip of a calender?

All the trite of new year resoultions, higher expectations. Is the dawn of the 1st of January really a cause for celebration or just a façade of new beginnings with hardly any newness to it?

Whichever way one looks at it, the new year is bound to always elicit some freshness and jubilation in any one human and alive enough to experience it, even to cynics and skeptics like me. There is always a certain mystic and charm of a fresh year that goes just beyond the flip of the calender. A new year is like a new day - it offers its own unique enigma and with so many days ahead, offers us a chance to make it.

While the act of flipping over the calender is a simple one, the shift of attitude and character that we so often wish to carry over to the new year certainly requires more than a desire or wish. Just like how you plan your day ahead, making plans for the new year late in the year preceding is vital. This not only enables you curve ways to achieve the intended targets, it also allows you time to go through the targets and correct them where neccesary or be more specific with what you want to achieve as well as laying the concrete plans on how you want to achieve it.

The reason many new year resolutions fail before even day two is usually because most are made on a whim, a moment's spark based on a previous or maybe recurrent desire. Just because you have been wanting to do something doesn't mean your brain will automatically respond to the sudden wish to change momentum. The brain is a little bastard. It loves status quo. Unless change is introduced slowly until it settles into rythm, it will always reject whatever we wish to impose. That is why it is said 'Practice makes perfect'. The tiny goo that is our brain often needs a little firm prodding so as to get off that lazy ass we so often allow it to slump into.

Another reason they fail miserably on their belly is because we so often want to do them all at once. Multi-tasking, they say. Well, multi-tasking lowers productivity. Confusing the brain on what to do means you never concentrate on a single task hence never complete it and if you do complete it, then it's not well done. The best way to finish tasks is to do them one by one, in order of priorities. Hard, but doable. Offer your full keenness on one task and do it well. The results will be stupendous. But like everything, the brain will need conditioning through consistency to pick this up too.

A new year is like a fresh page - it offers you an empty space to fill. But just because space is there doesn't translate then to a sudden influx of knowledge on what to do with it. You will need to give your brain what to work with beforehand and you will need to have lain down an outline, even if it is just in your head for a start. Have a silhouette so as you know how to draw the body. Striking blindly is what leads to burn out and loss of motivation hence leaving most of us feeling dreary and jaded by February. An outline is a motivation on itself with the other being a vision of who we want to be.

A new year resolution is never the solution anyway. True, it offers a 'a new possibility' but as a writer, I know a fresh page doesn't automatically translate to the thoughts being any kinder. Often times, as long as the idea is there, a  firm push is all it needs, a little grit. It's all in the head. Your desire and mentality determine your actions. You want change, you start to work on it as soon as possible. It doesn't matter what. A change could happen on March 23rd or on December 28th. It could happen within the year you wish it to or it could carry on into the succeeding year. The thing is not to expect miracles just because we desire or just because we have faith. Action. That's all it takes. The first step is the most important. And the first step is to realise you don't need a new year to make a change. Start now. There isn't much time.

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