The New Year is an excellent opportunity to take a fresh look at life. It is a time when we can resolve to make real changes to our life. However, sometimes it is easier to create resolutions, rather than actually make the lasting change. As we create new year resolutions, we also need to work out how we can make it part of our life long change.

What Good Habits Do you Need?

The key to New Year resolutions is to choose ones that you really need. Take an honest look at your life and decide where it could easily be improved. Often it is small issues and minor irritations that can spoil our day. For example, do you easily get angry for the smallest provocation? If that is the case make a resolution to control your anger. Often we don’t think of simple things like this, but, if we can resolve to improve in areas like this it will make a big difference to our quality of life.

What do You Wish to Achieve in 2008?

If you know what you wish to achieve, then work out the kind of resolutions that you will need. Be bold and willing to follow your heart’s aspirations, don’t just think of small changes – think how you can make a real difference to your life. Be prepared to make resolutions to aim for a completely new goal and change of life.

Give Them Importance

The success of new habits will depend upon how much importance that we give to them. What we value is given our energy and attention; if we constantly remind ourselves of our new targets and goals we will become more motivated to fulfil them. But, if we are not careful, habits can slip from our attention and therefore, we fail to make the change permanent. In this regard, it may be better to have a small number of resolutions that you are really going to work on, rather than a long list of speculative resolutions.

Make Them Public – Share Your Goals

One way to give a higher importance to your habits is to share them with other people, such as family and friends. Once other people know what you are aiming for there is a public pressure to try harder. This can be important for certain habits like losing weight. To successfully diet, it needs the support of those who buy and cook food in your family.

Work Out How You are Going to Make it Stick

New Year Resolutions are not just about deciding on some aims, we need to also decide how to make them work in the long term. If you have a new year resolution to get fit, work out the types of exercise that you will actually be willing to do. Create time for exercise; get the right equipment and, if necessary, subscription to the local gym. If you have resolved to have better relationships with your partner, work out several things that can easily make an improvement to your relationships – and make a real effort to be considerate.

Progress Not Perfection

Another tip is to choose new year resolutions that are realistic. New Year resolutions do not mean that you have to become perfect; aim for progress rather than perfection. Make it a habit to continually strive to better yourself. Aim to minimize anger rather than eliminate it completely. Exercising 3 times a week may be more realistic than spending 10 hours a week in the gym.

Choose One

This is said to be the most effective way of getting a New Year’s resolution to work, just choose one.

Photo by Unmesh, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

These are some of the best reasons to become vegetarian:
1. Vegetarian Food is easier to digest.

When we eat meat it is difficult to digest. This means that after eating a lot of meat, our stomach feels full and heavy. For a couple of hours we will feel lethargic and be more likely to fall asleep. Have you ever wondered why the whole family falls asleep after eating Christmas Turkey? It is because they are digesting the meat. A vegetarian diet is, by contrast, much easier to digest. We will be less lethargic after meals and find it is easier to digest. Try some tofu fritters for Christmas dinner, that will keep everybody awake.

2. Vegetarianism avoids cruelty to animals.

It is an unfortunate fact, that the modern livestock industry adopts many cruel practices. Animals are reared in close proximity and often die painful deaths. Many people choose a vegetarian diet to avoid contributing to this unnecessary cruelty to other living creatures.

3. Vegetarian Diet Improves consciousness.

When we eat meat, we take on board the animal qualities in the meat. An animal is more likely to be aggressive, and restless. When we eat meat, we take on board these qualities. Therefore, imperceptibly, we find it more difficult to curb our animal anger and develop peace of mind. If we adopt a vegetarian diet, we will take on board the milder qualities of vegetables, this will make it easier to conquer our restlessness and anger.

4. Vegetarian diet is better for the environment.

At the moment there is a lot of concern about global warming. This is caused be excessive emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. Gaining food from an animal based diet, is much more carbon intensive. To raise livestock require a much higher percentage of land, chemicals and energy. If the world adopted a vegetarian diet, we would find energy needs would fall dramatically.

5. Vegetarian diet is better for health.

A vegetarian diet helps us to avoid animal fats, which can contribute towards heart disease. Also a vegetarian diet tends to be higher in fibre, which has been show to reduce colon cancer. Various studies have shown that those who adopt a vegetarian diet have a much longer and healthier lifespan.

• Benefits of Vegetarian diet
• Pages on Vegetarian Diet at Sri Chinmoy Centre