New Year Resolutions

更新：2023-11-22

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[00:01.45]Lesson 50
[00:03.08]New Year resolutions
[00:11.09]What marked the end of the writer's New Year resolutions?
[00:17.14]The New Year is a time for resolutions.
[00:20.86]Mentally, at least, most of us could compile formidable lists of 'dos' and 'don'ts'.
[00:27.27]The same old favourites recur year in year out with monotonous regularity.
[00:33.14]We resolve to get up earlier each morning, eat less,
[00:37.10]find more time to play with the children, do a thousand and one jobs about the house,
[00:42.86]be nice to people we don't like, drive carefully, and take the dog for a walk every day.
[00:50.19]Past experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyond attainment.
[00:55.66]If we remain inveterate smokers,
[00:58.23]it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure.
[01:03.90]Most of us fail in our efforts at sel-improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to carry them out.
[01:13.48]We also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolutions to everybody
[01:18.73]so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways.
[01:24.75]Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolutions to myself.
[01:30.80]I limited myself to two modest ambitions: to do physical exercises every morning and to read more of an evening.
[01:40.27]An all-night party on New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year,
[01:50.69]but on the second, I applied myself assiduously to the task.
[01:55.88]The daily exercises lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up.
[02:04.42]The self-discipline required to drag myself out of bed 11 minutes earlier than usual was considerable.
[02:12.37]Nevertheless, I managed to creep down into the living room for two days before anyone found me out.
[02:19.33]After jumping about on the carpet and twisting the human frame into uncomfortable positions,
[02:25.60]I sat down at the breakfast table in an exhausted condition.
[02:29.86]It was this that betrayed me.
[02:32.38]The next morning the whole family trooped in to watch the performance.
[02:36.73]That was really unsettling but I fended off the taunts and jibes of the family good-humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea.
[02:46.26]However, my enthusiasm waned.
[02:49.80]The time I spent at exercises gradually diminished.
[02:53.87]Little by little the eleven minutes fell to zero.
[02:58.72]By January 10th, I was back to where I had started from.
[03:03.21]I argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself at exercises in the morning,
[03:08.51]I would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home from work.
[03:12.92]Resisting the hypnotizing effect of television,
[03:16.39]I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyes glued to a book.
[03:21.35]One night, however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs and sat in front of the television pretending to read.
[03:29.76]That proved to be my undoing, for I soon got back to my old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen.
[03:37.41]I still haven't given up my resolution to do more reading.
[03:40.96]In fact, I have just bought a book entitled How to Read a Thousand Words a Minute.
[03:47.22]Perhaps it will solve my problem, but I just haven't had time to read it!