Getting back on it

This week is the first week back at work. Going back after two weeks holiday for the Christmas and New Years period. 

There is a resistance to going back. Why? Because normal daily life is hard work, it takes effort. Getting up early. Working 9 to 5. Going to the gym. Then squeezing in cooking, cleaning and entertaining the kids.

Then there is also a sense of relief to going back. Getting back into a normal routine, a schedule. Returning to eating and drinking normally, getting back into exercise. Getting out of the house and getting some fresh air.

Why is there such a stark contrast between what we do outside the holidays and during the holidays?

I can understand spending more time with family and friends. Celebrating life with drink and food.

I can understand having a break to spend time reflecting on the past year. What went well, what didn’t go well. What were your successes and what were your lessons.

I can understand spending time to reflect on what we want to achieve this year. What are our goals and objectives. Then breaking them down into tasks and milestones. Then deciding what action and what habits would be needed to get us there.

But why is it that we lose control. We abandon all responsibility then eat and drink ourselves silly. That we spend the whole holiday held up inside.

We can choose what we do. Let me say that again. We can choose what we do. One final time. We can choose what we do.

Expectations

There seems to be an expectation created by society. An expectation of what we are supposed to do over Christmas and New Years.

That you should lavish others with presents. Kids should drown in the number of toys, clothes and technology they receive. We should eat and drink ourselves silly. We should spend every day locked in together, watching TV and playing video games.

We see these scenes everywhere. In television soaps, films and entertaining programmes. On TV adverts. In magazines. Recommendations of the coolest toys, funkiest gadgets, the best turkey and nicest wines. We see it all over social media. The Facebook pictures of families in matching outfits. The pictures of long table beautifully decorated for twenty guests. Of banquets filled with delicious meats and wines.

We feel the pressure to make everything perfect and we buckle under it.

Other people’s choices 

What we are doing is handing over the control and responsibility of our lives to other people.

We are handing over the decision-making process to other people.

We are allowing other people to make our choices.

This is a seductive thing to do. Why? Because we no longer have to make choices. And making choices is hard. Letting others make our choices makes life so much easier.

There is a problem with letting others make our decisions. We end up with a life, that is not of our own choosing. We end up with a life someone else has chosen for us.

It is most likely that those decisions don’t have our best interests at heart. Those people don’t have our best interests at heart.

Then we sit and wonder why we are so unhappy with our lives.

Responsibility

Perhaps that is part of the holiday. Having a holiday from being responsible for our lives. Again, because being responsible is hard work, it takes effort.

When the holidays are over though, we take our responsibility back. We become responsible for our lives again. We become responsible for our decisions. We then spend the next few weeks undoing the damage of irresponsibility. Regaining the fitness we have now lost. Losing the weight we have gained. Re-engaging our brain to work a 9 to 5 again.

Acting differently too. Putting on that professional telephone voice. Wearing your freshly washed and pressed work clothes. Taking your own home-prepared lunches to work. Saying no to the leftover chocolates your co-workers bring in to the office.

Perhaps it’s because we have so few long holiday breaks. Working hard all year then have an uninterrupted two week holiday. Throwing caution to the wind and overindulging. If there were smaller, more frequent holidays, we would be more responsible on holiday. Building in time to work out. Eating healthier. Not drinking as much. Going to bed at a decent hour. Building a habit of responsibility during the holidays.

Takeaways

Our daily lives dramatically change during the holidays to when we are at work. We overeat, over drink, do not exercise and confine our families to the house for days on end. Why is that?

Society has expectations about how we should be living and enjoying the holidays. TV, radio, magazines and social media bombard us with it. You will feel the pressure. If you give in, you will end up doing everything like everyone else.

Letting other people tell us what to do is easier during the holidays. It takes effort to make up your own mind and stand by your decisions. If you do, you end up with a life chosen by someone else. They probably don’t have your best interests at heart. You will then wonder why you are unhappy.

Be responsible for your own life. You drank the wine. You ate the trifle. You stayed inside all day playing Fortnite. You didn’t go to the gym. Nothing was stopping you doing something just a little bit  healthy. 

Take responsibility and take control. It’s your life you are living. Only you at the end can decide whether you are proud or whether you regret the life you lived.