It’s already the second week of January, and I’m guessing that many people including my clients are either following their New Year’s Resolutions or have already ditched them saying that they have failed in upholding them.

I personally have never made Resolutions at New Year as I know that kind of structure does not work for me and that in the process of trying to keep to them I’m setting myself up for failure. However, I do appreciate that for many people it can be life changing and turn the course of their lives’ into something quite positive and empowering. However, I struggle to understand why we wait until the beginning of the year to improve our lives by setting up resolutions. Surely we should be striving to continually improve our lives throughout the year by nourishing our bodies with good diets, exercise and down time, and our minds through reflection, meditation, prayer or any other discipline that appeals to us. Let’s not forget to practise “love”, “acceptance” “forgiveness” and “compassion” towards ourselves first and foremost and also to all those around us.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” —Seneca 

One of my clients this week truly made me smile by stating, “Aarti, I have decided to make you, your sessions and McTimoney Chiropractic my ONLY new year’s resolution!” Now I should have felt flattered by her compliments but I did not as that then indicates McTimoney Chiropractic exclusively fixing her instead of the sessions being a partnership between us which I believe them to be. I always try to explain to my clients that in order to reap the full benefits of my treatments they too will need to do some work on themselves outside the session.

This particular client’s last session was 2 years ago and prior to that she had been coming to see me 2/3 times a year since 2008 as she felt regular maintenance sessions benefitted her tremendously and made her feel more relaxed and able to cope with her life and its challenges better, as well as reduce or totally clear her various aches and pains. She had forgone her sessions of alignment because as she said, “Life simply got in my way and I put myself last and everybody else from my parents, children, spouse, employees and even friends always first. Of course I am now paying a price for it as I’m in a great deal of discomfort and pain”.  I reassured her that I would do my best to help her as I had done in the past but also it would be unwise to make McTimoney Chiropractic her “only resolution”. In fact it would be unhealthy to do so as that is then becoming solely dependent on me instead of finding other avenues to explore and work with in conjunction with McTimoney Chiropractic. I encouraged her to consider incorporating other things in her life from hot baths, stretching, walking in nature, adequate rest, journaling, meditating, and restarting some of the hobbies that she was once passionate about and enjoyed doing so much as well as possibly discovering new ones.

I emphasised that I was not in favour of setting very “fixed resolutions” as from my experience this often led to failure whereas “flexibility in approach” was more manageable and doable with the outcome being more likely to lead to success. She totally got my message and realised that we should be checking in on ourselves daily, weekly, monthly and not just yearly to improve all areas of our lives. It’s a daily practice and not an end of year inventory only.

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” —T.S. Eliot