No, I am not going on any kind of diet this New Year. Neither do I have any specific weight loss goals. I have done it all my adult life. Promising myself regular exercise and healthy food, just as Christmas bells start ringing, and light works usher in the New Year. This search for a ‘new me, better me’ is too boring for me. I figured with age one learns to manage their food. And, food is essentially a coping mechanism, which has several psychopathologies embedded in it. One doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to eat healthy. It’s one’s relationship with food that needs healing and it is as much a psychological process as it is about healthy habit formation.
So, this year-end I want to focus on the subtler things that I have been in my blind spot. Some shortcomings in me that I either didn’t note or didn’t feel were big enough folly to try and change. New Year resolutions are about becoming a better version of me - that is physical. Going from 70 kg to 50 kg would be awesome and wouldn’t I enjoy abs? Of course. But that will not make me a less difficult, or messy person to live with. So, this year I am trying to focus on changing small things, and learning to inculcate habits that will make my adult life manageable and joyful.
Here goes my list:
To keep things where they are supposed to be kept. I tend to lose too many things — from something as trivial as an earring to major belongings like keys. Most millennial hustlers live busy-cum-lazy lives. My resolution this year is to set up systems, where losing things becomes less of a possibility.
Do not scroll while I am on call with someone. Lately, I have picked up a habit of browsing through news and Instagram while on a call. As if talking to the person alone is not engaging enough. There is some kind of disregard and disrespect in this. The phone call is already a limiting experience for human connection because it doesn’t engage all our sense perception. In addition to that if we start even disengaging with that there is hardly any point in that conversation. So, full attention, and even when there is boredom, let it be filled with silence.
Being comfortable with silence. To reach a stage where the exchange of words isn’t a compulsion. Awkward silences are welcomed instead of inducing cringe and anxiety.
To not attribute the worst intention to people and believe in their inherent goodness until proven wrong. A lot of our anxiety comes from believing that people do not like us. It can be done away with simply attributing the best intention to people.
To talk less, and listen more. Engagement over impression.
To be more playful, while doing things. When we learn to take ourselves less seriously, we also learn to do the things that matter to us more seriously. Playfulness helps us lighten up and focus on the goal.
To fill each day of my life with love, instead of mad ambition to achieve some vague goal of validation from the world.
To invite more people into my life from different quarters, with different interests. Instead of restricting myself to only those who share my point of view, and likes and dislikes.
No self-imposed punishing targets of self-improvement. Only mindful marination of everything I read, observe and feel.
(The writer is a mental health and behavioural sciences columnist, conducts art therapy workshops and provides personality development sessions for young adults. She can be found @the_millennial_ pilgrim on Instagram and Twitter)
