Make This Year's New Year's Resolution Last

It's been six months since Body Baggage for Misfits started meeting in East Nashville.  Six months gone.  Six months we can't live over again.  So my question to the group at our last meeting of the year was, "Are you happy with how you felt during these last six months? Are you happy with your body and your state of mind?"

If so, don't change a thing.  If not, please consider that there is a very real possibility that you will feel the very same way six months or even six years from now - or worse because you never did anything to change it.

Each day you don't feel good or strong or healthy is another day gone.  If nothing changes, the days and years keep passing by and eventually you've lost a decade or more feeling shitty about your body, addicted to sugar, mildly depressed, 10 or 100 lbs overweight, tired or sluggish or whatever it is that's bringing you down.

Even if your job sucks or you are lonely or in a bad relationship, you can do something to feel better each day, something as small as taking a walk around the block before work or stopping for 5 minutes to breathe and stretch before bed.  You have the power to make good with your body and to feel at peace in your skin.  At the very least, you have the power to feel a little bit better than you do today.  It's not even about losing weight.  It's about taking care.

New Years is an arbitrary thing.  It's another night and another day.  In fact, every day is an opportunity for a fresh start, but there is something magical about a new year.  Psychologically, the new year seems to allow space for change, but so often we shoot too high, too big.  What if your New Year's resolution is simply to take better care this year, body and soul?  Set a goal for the month of January that is easily attainable... an apple a day, a phone call to Grandma once a week, 20 sit ups before bed.  And then add another one for February.

These six months are gone.  Twelve months of 2012 have passed.  So where are you?  Are you good?  If not, do something.  Anything.  Just make it small.  And when that new thing becomes second nature, do something else.  Do better.  Take better care.  Opportunities abound.

This is a picture of last night's sunset in Los Angeles.  Maybe my New Year's resolution should be to breathe like I do when I'm back in California, to keep looking up and out every day.