Finding the motivation to stick to your New Year Resolutions

IT'S that time of the year again: New Year Resolutions.

Why is it, that the cold dark month of January is the time of year we feel the need to be a better, more improved version of ourselves? In fact, the best version possible – ever. Well, it's a new year obviously, and a new year offers the tantalising possibility of new beginnings. A new ‘me' might very well be required to go with it.

To go with that rosy vision taking shape in our mind's eye. And then of course we may well have over-indulged in the preceding month and be feeling guilty. Ripe for resolutions.

To resolve never to offend the sacred vessel of our bodies again, and to greet the festivities at the end of this year as a slimmer and fitter person.

Making New Year resolutions is inherently hopeful and optimistic. You expect things can get better for you, for your work experience or for your community. A positive view of the future can motivate us into action. If we don't believe tomorrow can be better, we're unlikely to take steps to improve ourselves – and in so doing, our community. So, optimism is doubly beneficial – contributing to our own mental health, and engaging us towards positive action which has an effect on those around us.

As RTE's annual Operation Transformation kicks off again, we can see from the leaders' backstories how physical wellbeing affects those around us: family, friends, loved ones - and ultimately, communities.

We're inclined to focus on the physical – and that's no bad thing. Feeling better physically affects our mental health, body and mind inextricably linked.

But at a time when, for many, staying warm and fed is a struggle, most of us are absolutely fine as we are: as our authentic selves, which is what we're trying to be, most of the time. And our authentic self isn't defined by that roll of fat over the top of our jeans. What about the ‘way of gentleness'?

As January once again seems to require ‘a new you' (how many do we have in us?), perhaps we'll wander over to the leafy walk by the lake, and gaze at the swans mirrored in the water; or take a stroll along the familiar streets of the town after the shops have closed their doors, as in the ‘paseo' of Spain or the flâneur of France… or trace the shoreline of one of our breathtakingly beautiful beaches, and let the elemental nature of our county assuage us, and feel it, as Yeats said, “in the deep heart's core”.

Now there's a rosy vision.