72 GSCENE
Are ‘Resolutions’, New Year or otherwise,
good for our mental health?
The tradition of New Year resolutions has
been around for ages; an imperative to get on
and do all the things we know we ‘should’; a
wake up call after the excesses of the xmas
season; a chance to focus on selfimprovement techniques and the long-term
‘to do’ list. For some, this may be a positive
commitment to undertake practical,
psychological and relationship housekeeping,
a good fresh start.
It’s a truism that loads of people take out
gym membership in January, full of good
intentions. This was certainly true for Martha.
She had done her bit over the years to help
gyms profit enormously from our tendency not
to follow through on all those resolutions.
There were lots of good reasons why Martha
started well and gradually stopped going.
Getting fit is not that easy! And she knew
deep down that she always hoped for a ‘quick
fix'. It just didn’t bring the reward of better
health, better temper, better relationships
and better self-image that she so wanted.
“She had the feeling
that making resolutions
was buying into and
confirming her low
self-esteem”
Worse still, she had the feeling that making
resolutions was buying into and confirming
her low self-esteem. Depending on how
depressed she felt at the time, the setting of
unrealistic resolutions and then failing at
them ended up reinforcing how awful she felt
about herself when she made a resolution
that she thought would make her feel better.
For goals to work, they need to be
achievable, for you.
The year, though, Martha had resolved to try
an alternative view of the resolutions. She
realised that some of the problem was the
inherent egotism of the resolution treadmill,
and she wanted to challenge her tendency to
see it as all about her. One of the problems
with resolutions is that they tend to be solely
about your ‘self’, you as an individual, a
separate, single being. It can so easily
become an ego-driven business of self
improvement. Nothing wrong with that if it
works for you, but for those of us like Martha
who struggle with our mental health it can
start to feel like a treadmill of failure.
So Martha set herself the task of seeking an
alternative by thinking about how she could
use the impetus of the New Year to improve
life for everyone around her, including herself,
but also her community. By attending to the
world around her, could she make life a little
better for everyone? Could she resolve to
make the world a better place, rather than
just her life?
Martha started by talking to friends about
what they thought of her world changing
resolution. Some were sceptical, took the piss
or just looked a bit blank and changed the
subject, but a surprising number took her
seriously. Interesting conversations came up
about what people thought was missing, why
they did not feel connected to their
communities, how unfriendly some found the
scene, how unsafe some felt going out, how
worried some were about not fitting in, how
lonely some of them were.
Several of her friends talked about how they
felt the need to put on a ‘front’ of some kind,
to hide how they really felt in order to get by.
Martha recognised this in herself, particularly
at work where she tried hard to appear
upbeat, happy, bright even though she was
depressed and suffering inside.
In the end, five of them decided to adopt some
group resolutions. These included:
• Being more friendly when they were out,
thereby making the scene (around them)
a more friendly place to be
• Challenging themselves on their
assumptions about other people, especially
people who don’t immediately appear to be
like them
• Being more aware of how kind or unkind
they felt towards others
• Being more aware of how generously they
felt towards others
• Being aware of when and why they put on a
‘front’ of being ok when they didn’t feel it
• Taking opportunities to be more honest
about how they felt, when it felt safe to do
so
• Supporting each other to do all of the above
• Supporting each other to do some personal,
individual resolutions including being kind to
each other if the resolutions were hard to
keep to and congratulating each other on
anything they managed, however small
• Supporting each other to u