Zen

My second New Year's Resolution, in addition to being more patient, is to change how I react to people who drive me nuts. I suppose the two actually go hand-in-hand, as it's one big thing, but in this case I want to approach the situation differently. In the last few months, I've been learning one can't change the way people act and the only thing one can do is to change the way they react to other people.

For instance, if my neighbor plays loud music all the time (he does, but now he at least turns it off around 10 pm), it bugs me but not him, and I can choose to get angry about it, or I can figure out a way to cope with it. Or if someone consistently contacts you when it's convenient for them, rather than keeping in touch with you all the time, it's up to me to come up with a way to deal with it in a way that doesn't make me angry -- such as choosing to be happy to hear from that person and focus on catching up, rather than mulling over the question of "why don't you ever call me when you don't need something?"

Also, because everyone else makes this resolution, I'm going to lose twenty pounds this year. That's the 10 pounds I was supposed to lose in 2005, plus the obligatory 10 I'm going to lose in 2006.