It’s the night before Christmas and here I am thinking about the New Year already. Perhaps like many of you I am wondering what my 2013 will bring. Will it be about wealth or will it be about worry? Will it involve sickness or health? Will I achieve some of my professional objectives or will I spend twelve months lying on the sofa watching Project Runway All Stars over and over again?
Most important of all, I wonder: rather than hoping for the best, can I influence my immanent future?
I have never used the beginning of the year as a device to guilt myself into keeping to an ill-planned and over-ambitious resolution. Don’t get me wrong I always want to change something about my circumstances: a smaller waist, a fatter income, a happier disposition. It’s just that my need to better myself has rarely coincided with the hoopla surrounding the champagne-filled last night of one year and the groggy first day of the next.
But I totally get it. There is something memorable about 1/1/pick a year that makes it easier to count yourself into some measure of accomplishment. Also, a whole calendar year has just ended so it’s easy to glance over your shoulder and reflect for just a moment on your most recent pleasures and regrets.
So, yes, I get it. It’s just not something I’ve ever done before. But, maybe I should. And with that, right on cue, a customer at the surprisingly empty coffee shop where I am sipping a latte cheerily shouts something prophetic to the barista.
“I am gonna totally enjoy this piece of 1,000 calorie cake but in a week a whole new begins!” And with that he disappears into Christmas Eve night swallowing his dessert.
That got me thinking: A whole new him. A whole new me. A whole new you? I bet there are some folks oblivious to the holidays because they are busy planning a new them, a better them that will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of 2012 and soar into the fresh blue skies of 2013? I expect there are also a whole set of “new you” professionals whose busy season coincides with the first few months of the year. I thought I’d find out.
Tim Marzullo (aka Got Me Massage) has been helping people with a host of transformative goals for a while now. He has been a practicing massage therapist for more than a decade. Day after day, week after week men and women in the community come to him with an assortment of aches and pains. Some are looking for instant relief, like after a grueling rugby match or a week sitting at a computer. Others seek something deeper, a more spiritual solution to lifelong stresses now manifest in an older body creaking with pain.
I visited Marzullo at his home and asked whether he gets many appointments in early January from people who are embarking on a fresh start, a new pattern of healthy behavior.
“Yes and no,” he told me.
“I get quite a few appointments at the beginning of the year – people looking to relax after traveling and the stress of shopping and family. But, most are regular clients who have been out of town or too busy. I get one or two new clients though, people who want a more balanced life.”
“And how does that work out, in your experience?” I ask.
“It’s fifty-fifty,” he tells me. “Most disappear after a few appointments. But a few have kept coming for years. They have made massage a core part of their life. But it’s hard to stay committed to healthy changes with so many distractions in life, from home to work and everything else. Building one new thing into your routine that is relaxing and about self-care is a good start.”
I ask the boyish-looking health worker if he ever needs to set “new you” goals for himself, confident that someone so relaxed and so steeped in holistic betterment would have it all figured out.
“God yes!” He blurts out.
“A couple of years ago I needed to figure out a regular paycheck so my New Year’s resolution was to find a job with health benefits. I believe in the power of visualization (putting it out there and letting positive energy do the rest). And lo and behold a few months later a client referred me to Virgin America and I got a job as a flight attendant. So, I have been doing that and my massage for a year which has created a whole new set of issues that I need to fix in 2013.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like nutrition,” he said.
“It’s really hard to eat well with a schedule like mine, in and out of airports. So 2013 is all about juicing. I bought a Nutri Bullet (a special blender) and I’m testing different recipes so that I can juice at home and take my meals on the road.”
He nods over my shoulder and I notice bowls full of fruit and bags of flax seed and other unknown ingredients.
Marzullo smiles. “So far my favorite is kale, banana and blackberry with a squeeze of lime juice (add water). But I am not that disciplined. I kind of throw loads of things into the blender and hope for the best.”
As it turns out nutrition, New Year resolutions and a new you are pretty much synonymous.
I met local filmmaker Timo Elliott for lunch and we made the huge mistake of discussing mutual diet plans while we were perusing the menu. It wasn’t much of an ordeal for me because I am weak. I happily ordered my favorite: eggs with rosemary potatoes (yum!). But Timo struggled. He sat across the table from me surveying his options with some degree of anguish before finally going with a salad.
“The bacchanal is over,” he told me once our orders were placed. He was paraphrasing the stern but wise words of an elderly British friend whose recent warning stung.
“Timo, you are large,” his matriarchal mentor told him in a manner that sounded very Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey. “This might be fine now,” she told him. “But you are no longer young. This weight you have gained will compound any future illness. It’s time to stop.”
“The bacchanal is over,” Timo repeated knowingly.
You see, he agreed. His metabolism had slowed and his life of drinking and eating and enjoying the fruits of his youth were most likely behind him. I empathized. We then both sighed briefly, before moving on to a more light-hearted subject.
Later that day a proclamation by Timo appeared on my Facebook wall. “I’ve started a blog about the body, mind and spirit connection,” it read. “It will go public in the New Year.”
“What is this?” I messaged back, surprised to hear about something so concrete, so soon after meeting him for lunch.
“I’m keeping it real,” Timo wrote back. “My blog is called fifty pounds to passion. It will describe a process of elimination that will reveal the core essence of life. It is a collection of unrelated concepts and ideas that when put together might help us all find a balance between body, mind and spirit.”
Here’s Timo’s concept. He aims to lose 50 pounds of physical mass (unneeded junk and body fat); 50 pounds of spiritual mass (the people, places and things that are weighing him down) and 50 pounds of mind mass (regrets from the past and fears for the future). This process of elimination will reveal a new passion for living! Elliott’s blog is designed to keep him on track and help motivate anyone else who wants to follow along.
Of course personal transformations aren’t just about weight loss. Turning a new leaf can mean a lot of things: being more optimistic, finally starting that novel, having a child, moving to Portland, sky-diving, changing career. In fact giving thought to positive change is probably something we all do a lot of the time.
2013 has already begun. I imagine a good number of you are well aware of this, counting how many cigarettes have not been smoked, how many resumes have been emailed, how many salads (dressing on the side) consumed, how many juices juiced and how many pounds jogged away.
Hopefully I am amongst you, each of us steadily realizing our own personal objective in the face of procrastination and the endless busyness of life. According to both Tim and Timo, their best advice as the months tick by is to stay focused, take small steps, and if you slip, get back up, don’t wait another year to start over again.
I wish you the best of luck in 2013! And, here’s to a “Happy New You.”
Tim Marzullo: gotmemassage.com
Timo Elliott: fiftypoundstopassion.blogspot.com
