As a New Year approaches people are thinking of making resolutions. Personally I never bother, if I want to change something I do it no matter what time of year it is, especially if I think it will benefit my health. Also if you make a resolution and don’t follow it through you might feel you’ve ‘failed’ which isn’t a good thing. Studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after only 30 days, and only 8% actually accomplish them.
However, if you’re absolutely committed to making New Year resolutions you should consider in advance which you can achieve and avoid those which you know will be doomed to failure from the start. If you think about it, committing to solving World hunger is very unlikely to work, committing to occasionally donating an item to the food bank collection point at your local supermarket will. Also accept that your progress may be slower than other people’s, but you’ll get there in the end if you persist.
Resolutions that are likely to succeed
1. Try something new, such as meditation, yoga, or find a new creative hobby. Just because you have lupus doesn’t mean that you can’t try out new things. There are many benefits to learning something new.
2. Make simple resolutions such as being a more caring person, spend more time with friends and family, spend more time outside, keep a journal, enjoy the little things.
3. Start small. If you really want to make a resolution about exercise and diet then start really slowly and build up. For example with diet, try saying you will add more vegetables to your diet or cut down on sugar rather than stopping altogether. The same with exercise, maybe use the trick of getting off the bus one stop earlier, using the stairs more or walk your dog, basically just commit to move more than you do already.
4. Try simple changes to create healthy habits. As said previously add more vegetables to your diet, drink more water, start cutting down on sugar, junk food etc.
5. Commit to stopping pushing yourself too hard. We’re all guilty of this and know only too well what might happen if we do, so maybe make this the year you stop overdoing things and rest when you need to and be honest with yourself about your limitations.
6. Stop feeling guilty, lupus is not your fault, you didn’t cause it and you can’t stop it. If you don’t do the housework so that you can do something you enjoy so what? You may have to neglect one aspect of your life to indulge in another, life’s too short to keep beating yourself up. Read our article on the burden of guilt on our website here.
7. I’m going to say no. This is a tricky one as we don’t want to upset people, you can’t do everything or be everything to everyone so you will need to learn to say no. Take care of yourself before you take care of others.
Resolutions that are likely doomed to failure
1. Diet and exercise (with a proviso). Albeit these are excellent for lupus you may not be able to stick to them every day if you set yourself strict rules like losing x lbs every week or exercising for an hour every day. Lupus can flare with no warning and you might not feel like exercising or making a meal when this happens, you may then give up altogether feeling you’ve ‘failed’. So instead try small steps as in number 3 above.
2. Anything that involves being your ‘old self’. We often have to make adjustments to our life after lupus so trying to do things you used to do before lupus can be a step too far.
3. Similar to number 2, don’t try and do something that others do, keeping up with others is a recipe for disaster. Even trying to do what other lupus patients do won’t always work, we’re all very different and all have different capabilities dependent upon how severe our condition is. Set your own goals and go at your own pace no-one else’s.
4. Pretty much any resolution that starts with ‘I will never’. If someone says you can’t eat something or do something it then seems to be the only thing you think about. So start cutting down, or slowly building up to, your target.
5. Expense. This is one of the top ten reasons resolutions fail. If you make a resolution to go to a gym there’s a financial implication to that. This may motivate you as it costs money but it’s more likely that you’ll just waste the money. Don’t take on anything that costs more than you can very comfortably afford.
Even though I’ve said that resolutions aren’t necessarily a good thing there are changes that people absolutely should make as soon as possible. Those would be anything that is severely harming your health such as: smoking/drinking to excess/illegal drugs. If you have lupus your body is already struggling so to add any of these things is guaranteed to harm you as your body just can’t cope with them. There is a lot of help available now so please do seek it out.
