Ten Non-Exercise New Year’s Resolutions for Exercisers

I don’t care what the skeptics say. I love making New Year’s resolutions. Coming up with a yearly list of life-enhancing projects gives me a fresh look at what I want out of my life going forward. Plus it reminds me that opportunity is always lying on my doorstep waiting if only I would walk over and take it.

Making my resolutions this year made me want to think of some for people who exercise. I decided that all my suggested resolutions would be non-exercise-related. If you’re reading this blog, you probably already exercise and so would not need a resolution to do it. Instead the resolutions would leverage the focus, discipline and fighting spirit you already have developed from sticking with exercise and carry those assets over into other spheres of life. After all, people who exercise know that change is possible. They’ve done it with their bodies, so they’re primed to make it happen elsewhere. With this idea in mind, I came up with the following ten projects that you might think of taking on in the New Year the same way you tackled exercise in past years.

THREE FOR YOUR BODY:

1. For one day eat only foods with no added sugar. Whether you weigh more or less than you want or are just right, a day free of sugar will get you of the roller coaster of sugar rushes and crashes. You’ll gain extra mental stamina, energy and concentration, plus you’ll sleep more deeply.
2. Ask friends, members of your family and your exercise teacher to give you feedback on your posture. The way we stand gets deeply engrained in all of us from early childhood. For this reason our perception of our stance may not reflect the way you truly look. Get a reality check in 2011, and if your posture is found wanting, consider making serious effort to improve it.
3. On one occasion when you’re walking, sitting or standing for some time, try to keep your abs pulled in for 20 consecutive minutes. You already have strong abs from your workouts. Now train them to perform for you all day. This effort will challenge your concentration.

THREE FOR YOUR MIND:

1. Banish one bad habit for 24 hours. Whether it’s biting your nails, swearing to yourself at other drivers when you’re driving, watching too much TV – anything – try to do without it for a day.
2. Set your cellphone stopwatch to 20 minutes; sit in a chair, close your eyes and meditate until you hear the ringtone. Meditating, at least in my experience, is like Bar Method thigh-work for your brain. One session of meditating can clear out the debris in your mind and begin to firm up your cerebral muscles.
3. Decide on one activity or skill you’d like to do better or learn to do. Mull over the idea of pursuing it. This is a purely mental resolution, so you can choose anything that excites your imagination. File it away in your mind where you can call it up later.

THREE FOR YOUR HEART:

1. Let someone you have a relationship with win an argument even if you believe you’re right. Your generosity of heart will probably be repaid to you with dividends.
2. Call up from your mind the skill or activity you picked out for resolution #6 and look on the internet for a class or a coach on that subject. Try one session. If you like the teacher, consider carving out the time to attend regularly.
3. Learn the names of all the café baristas who make your drinks. If you don’t go to cafés, take it upon yourself to learn the names either of the clerks at your bank, the cashiers at your supermarket, or the servers at restaurants you attend. Research has found that people have an amazing capacity to learn names if they work at it. We Bar Method teachers know this is true since we’ve all developed the ability to learn as many as 30 students’ names during the 15 minutes before and after a class begins. If you make a project of collecting names, you’ll find as I did that people are always pleased to know that you remembered them.

And last but not least…

1. One resolution carried out is definitely worth ten that have fallen by the wayside. To that end, my last suggestion is to pick out one of the nine above – or one you’ve created – and repeat.