Tag Personal Improvement

The silly side of serious

Michael 6 Comments

If you read yesterday’s Uplift post, you might have been wondering where we were going with our opening sentence. By the time you got to the second paragraph, you may had doubted that you were even on the right website. How often do you find a post digging into how we improve our lots in life by comparing it to a stereotypical American Thanksgiving dinner (less the pumpkin pie)?

We knew we wanted something relating to Thanksgiving but not necessarily about Thanksgiving. (We’ll do that next week.) We both have been busy working on improvements. Not the self-improvements you might think based on our string of self-helper posts. Physical improvements to things, Diem to her house, me to my little hobby car. It made us wonder, why do people bother to try new things. We like the idea of new ideas but what gives people the idea to try making those ideas ideals. We hit upon one unassailable fact. The old stuff wasn’t very good.

Nobody cares about a better mousetrap no matter how many get built. But come up with a mouse repellant that works and now it’s a different story. A whole different way to do something that nobody thought of before. Or was able to accomplish before. Those things that so changed the way we conduct life deserve at least a passing remark of thanks.

I remembered a post I wrote for Thanksgiving in 2014. I was only interested in one part of it. The part about the turkey, the stuffing, and the cranberry sauce. It turned out, It was a pretty good preface to yesterday’s sentiment, Give thanks for what is broken. Go ahead, give them a look.

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Uplift 2024-2

Revolving Resolutions

Michael 1 Comment

For the last two years we have explained why we don’t get around to making our New Year’s resolutions until sometime in March.  No, procrastination has nothing to do with it.  Out logic is flawless.  The holiday season stretching all the way back to Halloween is just too hectic during which to make logical, sustaining, life altering decisions.  (See “Be It Resolved,” Jan. 2, 2012 in Life.)

The rule is about to have an exception.  A couple of them even.  She and He have both already resolved at least once for 2014.  He started planning changes for 2014 at the end of October.  She reached her epiphany while doing some between holiday cleaning and verbalized a resolution for next year almost before Christmas was over.  That’s when the light bulb went off, the penny dropped, and realization came into focus.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.

Holy resolutions! What a profound statement.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.  When something significant arises it would be silly to wait until March – or January – to do something about it.  And that’s another reason we’re against New Year’s resolutions at the start of the New Year.  One can’t just pick once a year to start improving.

Now there are always going to be those non-resolution resolutions.  Eat less, exercise more, stay off the couch, don’t nag, don’t drink, lose weight, gain height, avoid sharp objects, don’t insult the boss in public particularly when the boss is part of the public.  Some people just can’t make it through a New Year’s Eve celebration without spouting something seemingly profound in the cloud of champagne and confetti.  Go ahead and make those.  They are the ones that die on January 2 anyway.  (Hopefully at least the one about the boss.)

But real life changing challenges shouldn’t be restricted to one day.  It’s never the wrong time of the year to improve oneself.  Except maybe January 1.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?