Resolutions v. Approaches

It's the New Year so here's to a happy one for all of us.  As we merge into 2016, maybe we're thinking about resolutions in regard to the glitches in our lives.  I tend to be very suspicious about resolutions because I invariably fail at them except for the time I really did lose many pounds in order to "look good and feel better" when we took a trip to the East Coast with our friends. So, guess what? I ate everything in sight from Boston to Maine and back through several of those little states that make up the original colonies.  It took a year or so more but the pounds are back.

So instead of resolutions, I am going to take different approaches to my own life glitches.  Let me describe an example.  Take food (which I do every chance I get).  I'm going to approach the eating part of my life from a different angle.  Instead of trying to understand why my craving for chocolate has some sort of psychological connection to my relationship with my mother when I was an infant, I will approach my next encounter with chocolate by remembering the nearly unreal portion of a large holiday wrapped candy bar that I ate last night. I'll remember how I snapped it into rows of four pieces and piled them into the candy tin.  I'll recall how satisfying the rows looked as they fell into random position on top of the kettle korn pieces still left in the tin. I probably should have taken a picture of it it to help my memory.  Then I'll think about maybe allowing myself just one row per day.  I'll try to focus on how quickly I rejected that thought and plowed right into two rows to eat as I headed for the TV.

Then I concentrated on the program I was watching. It was that Bourdain man who was on a sensuous boat trip somewhere in South America where the people don't wear many clothes and the water is unbelievably clear.  The people on the sandy white beach toss cans of beer to the swimmers and they drink it while bobbing around in the warm water.  Anthony sits beneath a palm tree eating crab and describing his experience with sexual overtones no doubt induced by watching the hard brown bodies frolicking in the sand in front of him.  How could anyone resist being caught up in such a visual pleasantry?  I could and did.  That warm sea breeze that I could almost feel turned into a giant wind that blew me back into the kitchen for another row of holiday chocolate and since there was an odd row of only two pieces, I grabbed that to eat on my back to my chair before I crammed the other row into my mouth. So after two (okay, three) rows plus a partial one, I decided I could stop.

So my new approach to chocolate frenzies will involve the deciding when to stop part.  Even as write this, I am thinking about  the rows that are left in the candy tin.  I'm thinking about eating just one row after lunch.  And speaking of lunch, I wonder what's in the frig. . . . Maybe my new approach will accommodate other areas of food eating where I lack control.

See? I'm not resolving to do anything; I'm changing my approach to my shortcomings. Think it will work????