New Year’s Eve is a time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the coming year. It’s a time to notice changes that we want or need to make. It’s a time when it’s a bit easier to find the inspiration to push forward on those changes. New Year’s resolutions are a way of telling ourselves “I can do better, I can be better.”
The question is, do we really need a new year to do this?
Having a fresh calendar in which to anchor our goals can be helpful. There’s a collective sense of looking back on the past year, and looking forward to a better year. However, simply making resolutions year after year with little strategy or support conditions us to believe, “I will do it this time because this time it’s for real!”
The more Januarys we’ve done this, the more we’ve become okay with failure when we get “too busy.” The New Year’s resolution project is a psychological game in the end. If you take away the calendar (essentially numbers and letters on a grid) and set aside the bandwagon buzz about New Year’s resolutions, you are still you. You will confront similar challenges. You will be living the same life you did the day before.
The Truth About New Year’s Resolutions.
The unfortunate truth is that goals made simply because of the New Year don’t usually last. Research shows that six months after making resolutions, fewer than half of the people who make them have kept them. 60% of people will make the same resolutions the following year. Resolutions such as losing weight, quitting smoking, spending more time with loved ones, etc., are things to incorporate into your lifestyle all the time, not simply because the calendar flips.
Are We Addicted to Making New Year’s Resolutions We Know Will Fail?
According to Dr. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University, New Year’s resolutions are an expression of hope. “They aren’t an action plan for the future; they’re an emotional strategy for today.” When people set resolutions they feel more optimistic and in control. Unfortunately, says McGonigal, this sense of control is unrealistic.
“This is another quirk of the human mind: people reliably expect their future selves to have more willpower, motivation, and energy than their present selves. And while this thinking may not be realistic, it isn’t entirely foolish. The more optimistic we are about our future selves, the happier we are today.”
How I Recognize This Pattern
There is something to this cycle. I’ve failed so many times it’s ridiculous. I let myself down from time to time, even when I pretend I’m being awesome. Sometimes more than others. But I know that optimism and believing in myself helped me get from living a self-destructive and mundane life to a life of adventure and inspiration.
It all began with a fresh start, (many, actually) but not without careful thought, setting goals, and a lot of hard ass work. Even after a good run of kicking ass at life, I’ve still made tons of mistakes, looked like an idiot more times than I’d like to admit, and all the while it was hard.
We get the results we desire when we take the good and the bad into our own hands and accept that reality for what it is. If we make necessary, sufficient sacrifices with discipline. This, as you know, is easier said than done (like resolutions).
My goal is to help readers to think not “outside the box,” but to think as if there weren’t a box to begin with. No box. Just the laws of nature. This is absolutely necessary to living the life you want to live. And that life is different from the life others believe you should live, or even the life you believe you should live because “that’s just what people do.”
Don’t let the limiting beliefs of people in your life, or your Culture at large, dictate who you are and how you live. Strip yourself of assumptions about what you are “supposed” to do, turn off the “yeah, but…” and “I’m too busy” functions (or dysfunctions) of your mind, and allow yourself to really start fresh and set some meaningful, attainable goals true to you. Then live with them in a way true to you.
Finding Balance
How about finding a balance between New Year’s resolutions, developing strategic goals, and actually doing the hard work until it becomes a habit we kinda like? Why not make space and time for those goals by letting go of the need for more? In other words, do less, not more. Pick one thing, the top thing you need in your life. And pick one thing that is really dragging you down or taking the space and time you need for your goal. Trade them.
You can achieve ‘dreams’ as long as those dreams are realistic priorities and you are willing to take responsibility for those priorities, even when it sucks or is hard.
Are you open to change now? Are you optimistic about it? If so, here are a few specifics that might help.
Setting a Goal That You Will Make a Habit
Step away from the short-term satisfaction of New Year’s resolutions and get serious about creating short-term and long-term goals.
Goal setting is a process of identifying and defining the aspirations, achievements, and values you wish to turn into a living and ongoing reality. Making goals concrete and specific helps to solidify your commitment and ownership of those aspirations.
Step 1: Identify
What do you want? Results, right? We want things to be a certain way. The only way to get a result is to first identify that result.
Start with visualization. Visualize what your life would be like if your aspirations were as alive as you are every day, and you were reaping the benefits every day.
Where are you? Who is there? What are you doing? How do you feel?
Make this an exciting process, but be very honest with yourself.
Now use that visualization to make a list. Answer the following:
- How do you want to spend the rest of your life?
- What do you want to do in the next five years?
- If you had six months to live, how would you spend it?
Step 2: Organize and Prioritize
Take your list and organize it by importance. The most important things go at the top, going down to the least important. Remember that some of the results you want will need to be attained before others. And if you try to attain a bunch at once, it is probably humanly impossible, even if your ego tells you “you can do it!”
Step 3: Specify
Once you have a prioritized list of what you want, narrow it down and turn it into steps.
For example, under the larger goal of education, one might put “get a degree in psychology.” Under the degree, one might put “help victims of abuse.” This person may really want to help others, and to do it they know they need a degree. Both are goals, but one depends on another. One comes before the other. The step is to get a degree the result is to help people.
Follow it down from the big idea to the final outcome. List as many intermediary steps as are necessary. This will help you to see the flow between what you want and how to get it.
Step 4: Chunk Time
Chunking goals together into three time-based categories makes them manageable. Take your list and put the goals into long-range (5+ years), mid-range (1 year), and short-range (1 month).
Remember to focus on one, the top goal. And remember, you will need to make room for it.
Step 5: Act
Now you’ve got clarity and space. What can you do in the next week to further your most important goal? Do not evaluate feasibility (remember that we turned off our “yea but,” and “I’m too busy functions”).
Do it.
Putting pen to paper clarifies our thoughts of what we would like to achieve, and puts us in charge. It attaches time and reflection to a list that we can re-read and adapt as we grow. By defining our long-range, mid-range, and short-range goals, we have both an action plan for the future and an emotional strategy for today.
Don’t make resolutions in the name of the New Year. Make them from the core of your spirit. Make them part of your lifestyle. Use the New Year as a reference point, and your written plan as your guide. Take it one day at a time. I cannot stress that enough.
Each day is a chance to be mindful of the way we are living our lives. Taking that for granted leaves us aimless and eventually unhappy, wishing things were different. That’s true for me, anyway. Review your dreams, goals, and your visualization of the results you really want from life each day.
Remember, it’s hard and it’s supposed to be. Easy is not an option. That’s just the way it is. So be real.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
This same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.”
–Robert Herrick
One Response
Well said Broski. It’s funny cuz i was just talking to my friend about how rediculous New Years resolutions are. All the positive changes in my life. Happened due to my own choices.