Resolutions etc

So I was reading some stuff about willpower and how we only have a limited amount of it to use (which is why people tend to come home after a long days work and just want to sit in front of the TV apparently), and the person who was writing suggested then that we should limit the amount of stuff we do that would require extra will power to one thing at a time , e.g. don't say I will exercise everyday, I will eat healthily AND I will practice the fiddle everyday, but pick one and work at that. This got me thinking about will power and resolutions etc and how I think most people have a tendency to make them and break them. But the thing is that maybe we are too harsh on ourselves, say your resolution is to eat healthily from now on and you manage for a week or so and them succumb to the temptation of cake. Then maybe you feel bad because yes you did that and you broke your resolution and so you failed. However I think there is another way of looking at this, yes you failed the resolution to eat healthily from now on but that doesn't mean the resolution was useless, indeed because of it you ate healthily for a week (which you might not have done if you hadn't made the resolution in the first place), and just because you slipped up once doesn't mean you can't count that last week or that you can't carry on post-cake. Technically you failed the resolution but that doesn't mean you failed yourself, the effort you put in the last week is not cancelled out, nor is the health benefit you would have gained. My point is, we don't need to succeed 100% at keeping to resolutions in order to benefit from them. I think we need to see resolutions as inspiration rather than rules, something to aim towards and to do when we can, that will improve us even if we don't succeed in following them all the time, but we also need to accept the fact that it is very hard to succeed 100% and I would say as long as you succeed more than you fail and you keep 'getting back on the horse' then you should feel proud of yourself :). Hence we can set as many resolutions as we like.
And besides, a life devoid of cake would suck.

NB: This blog is my opinion (if I put a fact somewhere then I will give you guys a reference for it), as such I do not pretend for one minute is is correct so obvs feel free to agree/ disagree at will.