New Year's Resolutions

Okay, people! This is your first and last warning! Christmas is over! Turn the lights off and take those suckers down!

Whoo, glad to get that out of my system. I am not a grouch or a Scroodge, but enough is enough! I am thinking green here.

And now…on to the rest of my blog.

It is now time for people to make their New Year’s Resolutions, which for most people will be broken by the third of the year.

I got a request from a friend at the Poteau sorta Daily News and Sun for my resolutions. I thought about saying mine is for the Journal to become so popular everybody quits reading and advertising in the Daily News.

But I didn’t. I doubted that baby would ever see paper. And again, I am thinking green here.

So, in an effort to help my readers with their resolutions, I turned to Google for help and lo and behold, they had about 10,000 topics on New Year’s Resolutions.

Here are the top 10 resolutions based on one web site. No information on success or failure rate.

1. Lose weight (A lot of people need to do this, especially the Wal Mart shoppers who always seem to be in the way of where I am trying to go.
2. Manage debt. (No comment)
3. Save money (yes, another one I need to do. See No. 4 below for the major problem with this one)
4. Get a better job (uh, how about a job?)
5. Get fit (Yeah, right!)
6. Get a better education (not a resolution, but something even the Craigman needs)
7. Drink less alcohol (okay, I will stick with beer, or light beer which will help with No. 1 and No. 5!)
8. Quit smoking (I don’t! Good thing I only dip)
9. Reduce stress (okay, I’ll take a nap now!)
10. Volunteer (Does throwing the ball for my dog count here?)

I even did more research! (Yes, it is a slow news day). Two psychiatrists at the University of Maryland offered some tips on achieving resolutions!

Serious, I am not making this up.

One of them suggested the following: Create bite-sized jobs for yourself that you'll be able to accomplish. If your goal is too big, you'll feel defeated before you even get started."

Let’s face it, I feel defeated.

And yet, there were even more tips!

1. Avoid perfectionist thinking. Hmm, how about half you know what thinking? I am good at that.

2. View setbacks as lessons for growth. That is instead of the, boy I really screwed that one up thinking.

3. Don’t make absolute resolutions. This was an example one of them suggested, honest: Instead of saying you won't yell at your kids anymore, resolve to yell at them less often.

4. Don’t keep your resolutions to yourself. Yeah, make sure everybody knows how badly and quickly you fail so they can laugh at you.

5. Give them some meaning. That means don’t make resolutions that aren’t important to you. So this means I don’t have to make a resolution to carry out the trash each week and won’t have to do it, or feel bad when I don’t.

6. Take baby steps. Are there any others? This is also called procrastinating.

7. Fine-tune your spirituality. Whatever.

I hope this helps you with your resolutions.

And yes, I have decided on my resolution. My Resolution is to not make any resolutions, that way I can’t fail.