It’s good to recognize and affirm that you are amazing just the way you are. It is, however, a greater boon to aspire to better yourself. But doing both is the greatest state to be in; self-improvement should come from self-love rather than inadequacy.
Or you can be like Friedrich Nietzsche or the Duke of Rochester and carnal indulgence can be your main motivator. Whatever gets you up (both literally and literally) in the morning.
I used to look on the New Year’s Resolution as a sign of noncommittal. A new year should not be necessary to start one’s refinement. The nascent of desire should be enough.
In the past few years, I have abated this mentality. I cannot be a pedantic, austere übermensche forever. Eventually, I would need friends and a partner who could tolerate me. This new, lighthearted approach says that any opportunity for improvement, whether it be a new year, new child, relationship, job, etc., are all legitimate reasons for self-improvement. Or, again, licentiousness.
My bio lists my harder goals for the year. In addition to these are softer goals. Most of these promises were made throughout 2017. Though it was the New Year and the start of this website that motivated me to make a list in order to hold myself accountable.
Here are my new Years Resolutions
1. Keeping sugar out of my diet and ceasing with cheat days A couple years ago, leading up to my Iron Man, it was customary for me to have a good, solid two weeks of temperance that would all go down the drain thanks to one day of going total locust swarm at the dinner table. Sugar was number one on my hitlist when I turned into my alter ego, Mr. Creosote.
The binge would always end the same way: me pregnant with a bowling-ball sized chyme, feeling like I had had a relapse from a twelve step program. I also got a terrible thermogenic effect (Camastra et al., 1999) from the rich food that had me sweating, shaking, a migraine and totally wired from a sugar rush that could have me scaling K2 in record time.
Even after the Iron Man, I continued this horrible pattern for the next three years. I made tepid commitments every couple of months to end this affliction. These pledges were always temporary at best. My justification for binging was that I did not drink, smoke or do drugs, I exercised, worked my butt off in school and my business and never got laid. I felt excused to once or twice a month eat like a soused, Roman senator.
This last year I finally accepted these lapses as the ticking time bomb they are. Unless I got it under control, it would always control me. This is how sugar and binging got on my elimination list.
That and I finished school and got a girlfriend. My asceticism was no longer that severe, thus this indulgence ceased to be justified.
Aside from the occasional, singular chocolate covered peanut butter ball, I have successfully curtailed the sugar and binging from my diet since Thanksgiving. I owe much of this to confiding to my loving, understanding girlfriend.
Ever since I have stopped the sugar intake, I have seen a further decreases in body fat (Chernoff, 2014), a better sense of self-being, discipline and confidence, better energy levels and a much wiser selection of healthy carbohydrates (Otten et al., 2006), leading to...
2. Sticking with a vegetarian diet Since the cessation of sugar, I have almost completely halted the intake of meat and animal products save for yogurt and cheese. This was almost completely involuntary and seems counterproductive as an endurance athlete and avid lifter: the average endurance athlete needs to intake 55-65% of their diet towards carbohydrates (6-10 g/kg body weight), 25% of their diet towards protein (1.2-1.8 g/kg of bodyweight) and the remaining to fat. The average male endurance athlete must also consume 2800-3100 per day (Barnas & Barnas, 2014).
From 2015 all the way until a couple of months ago, I was fighting chronic fatigue more than half the time. Ever since taking on a mostly vegetarian diet and getting my protein from varied sources (e.g. complete proteins such as legumes, avocados, grains, vegetables and tofu [Woolf et al., 2011]), I have been having better, longer runs and rides, better lifts and more energy overall. The approach of mixing complex carbs containing small amounts of protein is coincidentally attainable for fulfilling the quotas on both macros. If you’re eating as many as 3100 calories in a day, it is more than feasible.
This is not advocating for everybody to take on a vegetarian diet. I love bacon, tri-tip, chicken and sushi just as much as the next gym rat. The reason for the new diet is that one day my energy levels started reacting adversely to meat. Though there are plenty of dietary (PCRM, 2011), environmental (Pollan, 2006), ethical (Walters, 1999) and spiritual reasons (Adams, 2001) to go veggie, my change came by unique circumstances and the desire to perform better.
In light of the vegetarian diet...
3. I will not be an obnoxious vegetarian I am aware that I am hypocritically being an obnoxious vegetarian in this article. Henceforth, I will not mention my vegetarianism unless someone else brings it up or inquires about it.
4. Clean language One who is able to express themselves with unique language and elocution is one of Howard Gardner’s forms of intelligence (Gardner, 2006). Conventional curse words can be very powerful ways to express strong emotions. But they are, in my opinion, overused. By some, they are a sign of lower fluency (Jay & Jay, 2015). It is my goal to continue to find new ways to hyperbolize and emote without using the common, taboo, four letter words.
Though I find these four letter words pedestrian, I have been classically conditioned to the point that they negatively affect me. I have used the common swears words for so long that I automatically associate them with strong, negative emotions. Using swear words sends me into a negative feedback cycle: if I get angry and use curse words, I get more angry, causing me to use more swear words. The best way to stop this cycle is to refrain from using the trigger words altogether.
This resolution is also a great way to retain all of those great SAT and GRE words for which I studied so hard. My diligence will not be wasted. Here are a few of my vocabulary favorites: quixotic, onerous and nonplussed.
5. Meditating more The benefits of meditation are many. Meditation improves the obvious (mental focus, equanimity) to the less apparent but physiologically salutary (slowed aging, increased immune system response)(Lomas, 2014).
I meditate because it decreases my activation, both good and bad. Both types physically and emotionally tax me. I learned years ago that being on an even keel is the best place for me on which to exist, only because the Island of the Lotus Eaters is a fictitious place.
Meditation is also fail-proof for me: either it works to calm me or it doesn’t at first. When the latter happens, I feel guilty for not calming down. This causes me to force myself to relax.
6. Volunteering I have been volunteering at least 3 hours a week at an elderly care facility since 2014. The facility is a combination assisted living, hospice and rehabilitation center for the old and/or indigent. I feel that volunteering is more worthwhile than monetary donations; from beginning to end, you know where your investment is going and how well its being used. There is no middleman - you witness the effect you have on those benefiting from your generosity. If you are unhappy with how your investment is being used, simply work harder. Simple enough.
Volunteering here is unique from other charity work; you form bonds and meet people you would otherwise not. Every week when I go in to read aloud, lead activities, play Bingo and instruct exercise with the residents, those who are cognisant greatly appreciate what I do for them. Most of these residents are wheelchair bound and/or heavily sedated. So for those that are conscious, they are joyous of my presence and personally thank me when I am present and miss me in my absence. It is by far the most satisfying caritas work I have ever done.
Volunteering with the elderly is also distinctive in that it influences other aspects of your life by teaching you empathy and patience.
Empathy because death and aging in our society are invisible (Ariès, 1981). As a consequence, Westerners have not learned how to fully respect those that have been here longer and may be on their way out (Butler, 1975). This kind of volunteering teaches what should have been taught a long time ago in our society.
Patience because you learn to work with the handicapped population’s physical and cognitive limitations. You find yourself much happier to acquiesce to the demands of the frail, sick or dying. Reflexively, this teaches you to have alacrity in your professional and personal life. Soon you realize that everyone has limitations and needs assistance in some way. It can be as little as doing the dishes for a housemate who is overloaded at work. Or it can be as big as helping your neighbor with a newly implanted TKR go for a walk or take out the trash. Good will becomes second nature.
7. Help as many people as I can This is a fairly obvious one. I want to build a vast business dedicated to helping a wide spectrum of clients. From the middle-aged who want to stop taking Beta Blockers, to the young weekend warrior with aspirations to run their first marathon, to the retired who want to learn how to use their legs properly and stop relying so much on their back. This is why I get up at 5 am and leave the gym at 8pm: to give people the best spin class or workout I can. The more people I can help with the knowledge and experience I have, the better for my sense of purpose in the world and for those who rely on me.
8. Nourishing and prioritizing all the loving relationships in my life I had to learn this one the hard way. Life is not all about pushing yourself as hard you can and placing second all of the people support you and who make your efforts possible. I will show the people most important to me that they are important by doing what I can to make them feel special. This goes for family, friends and the love of my life.
Goals are good to have. Whether they be long, medium or short-term, big, small, life-changing or life-enhancing. Pick something you’ve wanted to do and just do it. Just remember that you are good enough the way you are but you can always be a better version of yourself. You are a good person and you owe it to yourself to keep refining your skills and essence. Evolution is not just a species’ process but a personal one too.
Citations
Adams, C. J. (2001). Meditations on the inner art of vegetarianism: spiritual practices for body and soul. New York: Lantern Books.
Ariès, P. (1981). Invisible Death. The Wilson Quarterly,5(1), winter, 105-115. Retrieved January 22, 2018, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40256048
Barnas, D., & Barnas, H. (2014). Competition nutrition now: fuel your success for peak sport performance: a guide for athletes, coaches, trainers & fitness seekers. Place of publication not identified: True Health Unlimited, LLC.
Butler, R. N. (1975). Why survive?: being old in America. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Camastra, S., Bonora, E., Prato, S. D., Rett, K., Weck, M., & Ferrannini, E. (1999). Effect of obesity and insulin resistance on resting and glucose-induced thermogenesis in man. International Journal of Obesity,23(12), 1307-1313. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0801072
Chernoff, R. (2014). Geriatric nutrition: a health professionals handbook. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Gardner, H. (2006). The development and education of the mind: the selected works of Howard Gardner. London: Routledge.
Jay, K. L., & Jay, T. B. (2015). Taboo word fluency and knowledge of slurs and general pejoratives: deconstructing the poverty-of-vocabulary myth. Language Sciences,52, 251-259. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2014.12.003
Lomas, T. (2014). Meditation and Wellbeing. Masculinity, Meditation and Mental Health,120-151. doi:10.1057/9781137345288_6
Otten, J. J., Hellwig, J. P., & Meyers, L. D. (2006). Dietary reference intakes: the essential guide to nutrient requirements. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
PCRM. (2011, August 15). Vegetarian Foods: Powerful for Health. Retrieved January 22, 2018, from http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vegdiets/vegetarian-foods-powerful-for-health
Pollan, M. (2016). The Omnivore’s dilemma: a natural history of four meals. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Walters, K. S., & Portmess, L. (1999). Ethical vegetarianism: from Pythagoras to Peter Singer. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Woolf, P. J., Fu, L. L., & Basu, A. (2011). VProtein: Identifying Optimal Amino Acid Complements from Plant-Based Foods. PLoS ONE,6(4). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018836
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