December is the Decider…
Personally, I’m not a big December fan. The shortened daylight days that don’t ever get light seem to put my ‘SAD’ into a right tailspin. However, December never fails to deliver – you see it delivers hope for a better year ahead and the Christmas break provides a well-earned break from the grindstone to reconsider the path one is taking in life.
I could wax on about New Year’s Resolutions, how mine saved my life blah, blah, blah but it really did and all I’d like to say is that I wish I’d taken that decision a whole lot sooner. I know it sounds a bit kinda fluffy but back in 1993/4 I felt I could use the New Year as a springboard to change my lifestyle by having different rules. The rules being to do ‘Less’ of or to ‘Stop’ a behavioural trait. Where folk go wrong with NYR is to say ‘Right I’m going to start going to the gym, learn a new hobby, practise mindfulness etc’ – which by the 5th of January are just a dot in the New Year’s rear-view-mirror.
Now why my NYR was so successful, if you can measure success in such a way, was because it’s so easy NOT to do something. Easy being the action following a period of a tough decision followed by addiction withdrawal. I will admit that I had a go at a mid-year resolution in 1992 where I didn’t drink, smoke or eat unhealthy food successfully for six months but my mindset didn’t have the value perhaps that my NYR gave my ‘December Decision’ as I’ll now describe it.
You see my NYR of 1994 was really made in December ‘93 with the last cigarette being ceremoniously stubbed out on Boxing Day – a day when I took control as I was away from the workplace, where smoking went with the territory. In my mind I thought I could be nine days into being nicotine-free before taking the alcohol-free lifestyle plunge that would be so alien to those that I’d surrounded myself with when I went back to work.
I knew that sticking out was going to be a problem but with a few days under my belt and already feeling a lot better both physically and mentally, I thought it would give me the best opportunity of kicking out a whole lot of necrotic kryptonite that was slowly eating away at my world. Twenty-nine years on and my ‘December Decision’ has brought you to reading this blog and if you are considering a similar journey in 2023 then please start making some plans as part of your ‘December Decision’ and hope it delivers you a similar level of satisfaction as mine has for me.
1,146 Marathons, 270 ULTRA-marathons, 9 Guinness World Records, 15 Marathon des Sables, 28 Years' Alcohol Free, 28 Years' Running Marathons
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