Are You Going To Baby Yourself Forever? If You Don't Change Now, You Never Will

Another year over. A new one has just begun. And although it’s been weeks since New Years, you have yet to start working on that New Year's Resolution. I’m certain that you have a list of "reasons" – aka excuses – as to why you have been unable to make any changes in your habits and routines, but I will ask you to do one thing. If you do only one thing this year then please, for the first time in your lives, be honest with yourselves. Stop telling yourselves that you have good reasons as to why you've not made any changes this year – even though in December you were so excited to be finally making important changes to your life.

Stop coddling yourselves; you’re adults now. Why tell yourselves fantasies as to why you can’t be the person that you want to be? Why put the blame on someone else’s shoulders? If you couldn’t man or woman up and change yourself this year then at least man up and woman up to accept that fact. You chose not to act. You continue to choose not to change. This is the reality of things. This is your life that you are living. Accept the truth for what it is and live with it.

Accepting the truth when all we have been doing for years is lying to ourselves, is very difficult. Most people won't like to admit that they are the reason for their unhappiness, that they are the reason for their lack of progress and success. It’s one thing if other people tell us that we are lazy, unmotivated, big talkers – it’s a whole other thing when we tell such things to ourselves. There’s an important reason for this: We always believe the things that we tell ourselves; we accept them as truths.

If we are to be honest with ourselves and take responsibility for our lives, then we will have to admit our shortcomings. We will have to accept that we have not yet started looking for a new job this year, started to exercise more this year, to eat better this year, or to work on any other of our resolutions because we decided not to. We told, even promised ourselves that we would, but we didn’t.

People talk to themselves all the time. They tell themselves lies, which usually take the form of excuses made in order to preserve their egos. They believe these things because they want to believe them. Whether or not we are telling ourselves positive lies or negative lies is regardless. The anorexic girl is lying to herself just as much as the girl who's still allowing herself to be sexually harassed at work. One is telling herself that she is fat and the other that such harassment is unavoidable or acceptable.

We all lie to ourselves from time to time in order to make ourselves feel better. It may sound silly, but even calling yourself fat when you’re anorexic gives you a good feeling – you feel that by pointing out how fat you are, you are abiding to some socially acceptable standard of beauty, that you are doing something right. When we get a haircut we don’t like, we tell ourselves that it doesn’t look that bad.

Just the same when we promise ourselves that we will do something and then don’t do it simply because we didn’t feel like doing it, we tell ourselves that it’s not our fault. I couldn’t hit the gym this week because I was exceptionally tired from work. No. You’re tired from not exercising regularly.

Please, if you’re not going to do something then accept it for what it is: not the world working against you, but your decision. Accept your decisions and actions or inactions as your own and live with them. You’ll be much better off this way because you’ll finally be able to pinpoint the source of all your problems. You’ll stop feeling anxious because you’ll begin to accept that your life, your future, is in your hands. The fact that your hands remain idle is your decision, but you have a choice to do something great.

The fact that you choose not to is something that you can discuss with yourself. Why don’t you want to? Is the way that you are spending your time more beneficial? More enjoyable? You can pick your arguments apart until you either accept that you prefer not doing anything than doing something worthwhile. Your actions are facts, not stories that you get to make up in order to feel like your life is more interesting than it actually is. If, however, you choose to continue to lie to yourself (which is your right to do) then keep it to yourself. Just as you have a right to lie to yourself the rest of us have a right not to listen to your bullsh*t. Thank you.