If you’re making New Year resolutions . . .

. . . Regrets of the dying might help you decide what to resolve to do and not do:

After working in palliative care Bronnie Ware came up with five things many people who were dying wished:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

As Barking Up the Wrong Tree says: To them, these were regrets. For us, maybe the above can be a checklist of what not to do.

And for advice on how to make resolutions you’re more likely to keep, I read on a website I can no longer find * that it’s better to resolve to be better than to be good.

From memory, the theory behind this was that even a tiny, wee bit better is still an improvement and therefore something to celebrate whereas being good is more an absolute which is much harder to achieve.

* Don’t you hate it when that happens? Memo to self, resolve to keep record of useful websites so can find them again.

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