Lesson 50
New Year resolutions
What marked the end of the writer's New Year resolutions?
The New Year is a time for resolutions.
Mentally, at least, most of us could compile formidable lists of 'dos' and 'don'ts'.
The same old favourites recur year in year out with monotonous regularity.
We resolve to get up earlier each morning, eat less,
find more time to play with the children, do a thousand and one jobs about the house,
be nice to people we don't like, drive carefully, and take the dog for a walk every day.
Past experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyond attainment.
If we remain inveterate smokers, it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure.
Most of us fail in our efforts at sel-improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to carry them out.
We also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolutions to everybody
so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways.
Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolutions to myself.
I limited myself to two modest ambitions: to do physical exercises every morning and to read more of an evening.
An all-night party on New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year,
but on the second, I applied myself assiduously to the task.
The daily exercises lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up.
The self-discipline required to drag myself out of bed 11 minutes earlier than usual was considerable.