Seven New Year resolutions to get 2015 off to a flying start

The main problem with New Year’s resolutions is that we make them for themselves. As any good consultant will tell you (for a nice fee, of course), people don’t often know what is best for them.

When it comes to giving ourselves advice we tend to cheat a little, lie a little, convince ourselves that cutting corners isn’t so bad, and that we are right all along. We reserve the best advice for doling out to others. We lack the perspective to honestly tell ourselves what are the best things we should resolve to do.

A good way to sidestep this is to skip punishments and abstinence and instead make an annual to-do list. Instead of stopping things, add to your life. A checklist of things you want to achieve in 2015 gains more power when you put it on paper.

January is a terrible month to commit to doing anything. Gym owners rub their hands with glee at the prospect of people with great intentions but poor staying power signing up in the first week of the year. With every standing order comes a fresh pang of guilt that you slacked off weight training or didn’t stay on the rowing machine long enough.

Television broadcasts are full of ads flogging nicotine patches, gums and sprays. The bloated cartoon characters depicting the adverse effects of indigestion look strangely familiar, possibly seen in the mirror that morning. Under Quality Street wrappers, and heels of bread transformed into skyscraper turkey sandwiches, a strange worry arises that sluggishness might be tipping over into gout. And so we resolve to be better.

Abstinence and cutting back are tough enough at the best of times but are even more torturous in grim January, a month some see as a fresh welcome, others as a money- strapped no-man’s land to traverse towards the welcome border of February. It’s cold, it’s dark and it’s the wettest month.

Plan ahead

So don’t deny yourself things. Instead, plan ahead. And given that most people, organisations and businesses, do not have enough perspective on what resolutions are really important for them, I’ve decided to distribute some free resolutions so you don’t have to devise your own.

The first resolution is for potential instigators of new political parties. New hypothetical political parties and/or groupings and/or movements and/or collectives have finally overtaken the 1916 commemorations as Ireland’s Most Boring Topic.

Resolve to put up or shut up. The public can take no more lofty opinion pieces from political operators doing a merry kabuki dance with no conclusion.