New Year's resolutions. Each year, I go back and forth on whether or not I will make them. Part of me realizes the ugly truth: I've had pretty much the same exact resolutions for at least the past 15 years (lose weight, work out more, eat healthier, blah, blah, blah). It has to stop being a resolution at some point - I mean, I'm not meeting my goals if I have to make the same ones year after year after year - right??
I learned some great goal-setting guidelines in a business class I took in college (you may have heard of these before): make your goals SMART:
-Specific
-Measurable
-Attainable
-Realistic
-Timely
That's when I realized that the goal to "lose weight" is not a SMART goal. Lose how much weight? By when? Is it realistic? How am I going to do it?
So that's why I stopped making those same old tired New Year's resolutions. First of all, there is no reason why you should wait until the new year to start good habits - my old "resolutions" have now become habits I've worked into my daily life. I started to realize that, it's not that I was failing on my resolutions each year - that's just what life is about. Achieving those goals is a daily struggle, not something I can meet one year then never worry about again.
So my "new" New Year's resolutions have been ... simpler. Just focus on changing one small piece of my daily life that will, overall, help me achieve those bigger goals of "being healthy." For example, one year, my goal was to brush my teeth in a manner that wouldn't erode my gum lines. Yeah, yeah, I know this sounds completely nerdy, but I LOVE tooth care and was appalled when my dental hygienist (who typically gave me an A+ each visit) told me I was brushing too hard. So my resolution that year was to focus on proper toothbrushing technique. You know what? That was almost 10 years ago, and those changes have become habit - I don't even think about it anymore.
Now on to this year's resolution: stop relying so much on over-the-counter painkillers, particularly Excedrin.
Here's my big secret (not such a big secret to my close friends, I suppose): over the past 10+ years, I've gone through phases in which I borderline abuse (perhaps too strong of a word??) Excedrin. I would realize that, over the previous few weeks (even months), I had taken an Excedrin and/or a couple Advil tablets every single day. Not good!
Excedrin (for those who do not know) is an over-the-counter headache relief medicine that contains acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine. It's the caffeine that gets me: it provides a quick fix without the hassle or cost of buying a cup of coffee.
I would take Excedrin to relieve my headaches, and thought there was no way I could go without it. That's when I realized that it was the dependency on the drug that was causing the headaches.
So my official (and now public) New Year's Resolution is this: stop relying on Excedrin as a daily dose of caffeine/painkiller, and start using healthy foods (and lots of water, for crying out loud!) to regulate my headaches. I have a belief that (for the most part) we can control our health and well-being without the help of drugs. PLEASE NOTE: I stress the for the most part phrase - there are wonderful advances in the pharmaceutical field that provide relief and care for serious illnesses - that is not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about daily minor aches and pains.
My goal is to only use OTC painkillers for true pain, and to not rely on it daily. We will see how this goes as marathon training amps up ......
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