My body got a bit soft last year. I think I exercised less last year than I have for most years of my life! It had to do with moving from Ohio to North Carolina. The relocation was a year long project. Much of the year was spent sorting and packing, traveling back and forth, starting a new job, selling and buying a house, unpacking, and getting to know our new surroundings. It was all great stuff, but it really restricted my exercise time.

So this year I will get back on my usual track. I’d like to exercise every other day, on the average. I figure, since my job gives me as many days off as I work, I should be able to do it, right? Plus, I love it.

And I resolve to eat more Cheeseburger Happy Meals! How else am I going to have a body like that!

I spent a lot of my life being a people pleaser. That’s not a good thing. It’s a sign of a codependent person. It implies that there is a strong neediness, in this case a need for love and acceptance. It sets a person up for a codependent relationship where one is the giver and the other a taker, fertile ground for growing resentments. At it’s extreme, being a people pleaser is ugly. No one likes a spineless, wishy-washy person. I like to think I was not that bad. I think of myself as a pretty capable person, so my flavor of people pleasing was trying to impress others. I needed the approval of others, and I avoided conflict, even if I had to give up something that I really should have stood for. That’s when people pleasing is harmful to ones own self, when you give up your own wants/needs/values just to please the other person so they will love you.

I am well beyond all that now. I am comfortable in my own skin. I can take good care of myself, in every way. I have a good sense of my own set of rights and wrongs, and I am true to them today. I don’t need everyone to like me. I can say no. I can identify what I want and what I need. It doesn’t mean I’m selfish. Quite to the contrary, I have always been and still am a giving person. But I no longer let others take advantage of me.

And this leads me to the whole point of this post. It is a New Year’s Resolution post. I have realized that I no longer need to impress others. I am what I am, take it or leave it. Take me or leave me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care how I am, how I act. What I have also realized is that the only person I want to impress is my own self! I want to be the best that I can be in every way. I want to catch myself doing things well. Really well.

This should be a fun resolution!