I enjoy the variety of people who send me emails about my blog posts. One of the interesting, ongoing email chats I’mve been having is with a professional footballer. 

As someone who things being a pro footballer is the best job in the world, I have found it intriguing to chat with him about his aspirations, dreams of adventure and so on.

I asked whether he might like to write something for my blog, about whatever he wanted. He sent me this really nice idea of month-long resolutions…

Whilst browsing a few of your previous blog posts I stumbled across all the New Year’s Resolutions your readers had posted. I remember reading them at the time and coming away infected by all the ideas, big and small.

But the piece got me wondering – how many people are still attacking their January promise now?

Unfortunately, when I started thinking about it, virtually all of those around me that had confided their New Year’s Eve vow to me, have ‘failed’ and reverted back to their 2012 ways.
I love resolutions. I love the spirit and energy people find in January and I love the way no matter how ambitious the (perhaps) drunken idea might be, everyone goes along with it supportively, because we too are thinking of our own crazy resolutions. They are also 99% of the time designed to improve you, your life or someone else’s life for the better.

However, I do have my gripes with them…

Why wait until the New Year? Why not start on December 1st when you perhaps first thought of that future plan. At least then you might ride the wave that everyone else is doing in January and get two months out of it.

Resolutions are also often pretty unachievable. As Stephen Fry might say, why set a goal so far out of the comfort zone that you end up failing and feeling pretty god dam useless for it? We’ve all been there. I’ve set previous challenges and not stuck to them or achieved them truthfully.

Aware of this, I have tried something a little different in 2013. Having read a few pieces here and there on training ‘habits’, I decided to set a new ‘resolution’ every month, to test my will power with a fresh challenge every 30 days or so. In this way, I hoped:

• I wouldn’t get bored with one challenge
• I would achieve far more with my 2013
• The will power and habit accrued from the fresh challenge will habitually continue to work on the previous challenge

Because I have a ridiculously unhealthy addiction to anything sweet, I have fasted from all things sugar for a whole month on two separate occasions. I succeeded both times, only then to attack vast amounts of chocolates, cakes, sweets and biscuits when I completed my goal. What was the point in that? I had only tested my strength for those 31 days, not changed a bad habit.

In January, I decided to do it again. I succeeded. No more jelly babies at football, no more muffins with the espresso, no more late night chocolate. Then this time, when February began, my new challenge awaited me. 28 days of The Cold Shower Therapy – 5 minutes of cold showers every morning. This was horrific. For something so simple, I couldn’t believe how much of a challenge it was to convince myself to get in this freezing cold water every morning, every day. But slowly as the month drew to an end, my mind and body acclimatised to it more and more. But best of all, I also hadn’t reverted to my maniacal attack on the sweet shop.

I’m now in March and ‘Something for Someone’ is a great challenge. So far it has varied from making someone a latte when they were freezing cold half way through a ride, to rigging someone up with a new job. The test is there every day – helping someone new in some way without them knowing my challenge.

I feel ‘resolutions’ are easy, but the habit and continuation is not. So far, the introduction of new challenges seems to be working at maintaining the old ideas. Sure, I don’t have a cold shower every morning (in fact my appreciation of warm is sky high) and I eat chocolate again – but I don’t wince at all at those first few moments of cold drops and now it’s just a few chunks of 85% cocoa.

Undoubtedly, January and February made my mind stronger and now March has got me thinking hard on a new challenge.

Below is a rough list of the rest of my year…

• January – NO SUGAR
• February – 5 MINUTE COLD SHOWER DAILY
• March – SOMETHING FOR SOMEONE NEW DAILY
• April – PHOTO A DAY
• May – CYCLE EVERY DAY
• June – SOMETHING FOR THE FIANCE/WIFE DAILY (This is the same lady)
• July – DON’T SLEEP UNDER MAN MADE ROOF
• August – NO ALCOHOL
• September – NO PHONE / SOCIAL MEDIA
• October – 1 HOUR ITALIAN DAILY
• November – 1 HOUR MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DAILY
• December – SELL/GIVE SOMETHING AWAY DAILY

Here are some substitute ideas in case one of them is impossible (Don’t forget Mr Fry’s wisdom):

• Cook something new…
• Drive a different way to work…
• Run/Swim every other day…
• 100 press ups

The overall 2013 challenge I suppose is to train the habit of doing things outside of my zone, rather than the resolution itself, in turn making any idea/goal/to do list that little bit easier to stick to.

So far, so good.

If you’re still pursuing your original 2013 resolution, good on you.

If not, maybe give this a go, train your habit instead.

And you don’t have to wait until December 31st to start.