New Year Resolutions
And How to Keep Them
Hi there! I hope you had a relaxing and peaceful holiday. This is my annual New Year Resolutions post. Honestly, Boxing Day seems too early for resolutions, but our family rule is that you have until the first business day of the new year to make your resolutions, and this year, that’s only a week away.
A quick recap on 2023. I did not make any resolutions. Despite that, I feel as though I have changed a lot this year. I attribute this to midyear adjustments that helped clear a path for me to become more of who I want to be. Sounds vague, right? In essence, I changed because of what I subtracted from my life, not just what I added.
New Year resolutions, and “self-help” generally, are premised on the idea of starting new habits like exercise or a better diet, or learning something new, like a language or musical instrument. Some involve breaking bad habits (like smoking) but mostly people are focused on adding to their lives. The irritating thing about the Resolution Industrial Complex is that it assumes that “just” adding something new to your life is easy. In fact, adding something new is exhausting and hard.
That’s because there’s a missing step. You cannot just start. You have to stop something first. You must stop the stuff that isn’t serving you.
Early in 2023, I felt irritable about voluntary obligations, which made me feel guilty. I reasoned that I should feel good about the things I was choosing to do. They were useful, rewarding, and even prestigious opportunities. I was co-chair or chair on two different professional committees and served as a member on another two. I was the Treasurer for my son’s school’s PTSA, a time-consuming role because of the size of our budget.
In March, I decided that, as each obligation wound down, I would refuse any new “opportunities.” I would not allow new things to creep in to fill the space on my calendar. I convinced the PTSA board to hire a bookkeeping service and began to transfer work to them soon after. In early May, I wrapped up a short training program I was responsible for and put it out of my mind. In June, I was term-limited out of my treasurer role and said no to a request to rejoin the board in a different role. I also turned down two other requests to join volunteer boards. I deleted Twitter.
Each week, it felt like I had more time to do what I wanted to do (write, exercise, enjoy my friends) and less stuff in my life that was aggravating.
In 2024, I’m doubling down on this strategy. I’m going to take a semi-sabbatical from work from June 1, 2024-January 3, 2025, and concentrate on writing. I also want to travel, and God willing, next year will be our first year with an empty nest. I turn 50 (imagine Molly Shannon high-kicking it here). With a tsunami of bad news from across the globe, I want to keep myself sane and centered so that I can show up for the people who need me and become the best version of myself yet.
Hopefully, this doesn’t sound too vague or worse, vain.
Very Specific Goal Setting Advice
In the process of putting together my thoughts for this post, I watched a video on goal setting that had some interesting insights. I’m not linking to it because it was actually too long and a bit boring, so here are the highlights.
- Make a list of five goals and then start eliminating them (or combining them) until you have just one goal.
- That goal should be specific and measurable.
- Do not share your goal with anyone else. Research shows that telling someone your goal rewards your brain with a little happy bath of chemicals that are de-motivating, as though sharing your goal is the reward, and thus the goal is complete.
- Don’t celebrate every win. Again, rewards can breed complacency about goals. Short celebrations and then back to work!
- Now plan how you will reach your goal by breaking it down into concrete tasks.
Even More Advice
I also listened to a good podcast (Try This) about sleep and it had this amazing suggestion: Every day, schedule in some Worry Time. Take 15 minutes and write down everything that is worrying you. In a column to the right of each item, note whether there’s anything you can do about it in the next two weeks. For the items that you answered YES, add the specific action you can take, and when you will take that action. When you go to bed, if anxiety is keeping you awake, you can remember that you have already worried about everything and made a plan for the items you can do something about.
Admittedly, that last paragraph has nothing to do with goal setting or the new year or anything. Think of it as bonus advice, especially if better sleep is on your New Year’s Resolution list.
Really, My Last Piece of Advice for the Week
After last week’s reference to foster dogs, a friend wrote to ask what I recommend for dog training. If you’ve ever met my dog, you know that I’m a terrible person to ask this question. My dog is housebroken and very sweet but otherwise basically untrained. He humps. He barks. He’s annoying. As for the foster dogs, I barely train them other than to work on housebreaking them if they need it, and even then, they usually get adopted before I am very successful.
My observations about dog training are: 1. positive reinforcement training is more effective than obedience training with a spiked collar or yelling or hitting. 2. it’s worth it to spend the time and money to work with a real trainer who can help your family. The few times we’ve worked with a trainer, the results were much faster and longer-lasting than when I tried to implement stuff from YouTube.
Generally, my advice for intractable problems is to pay a professional to help you. I wish I had something better than that but here we are!
Happy New Year! I look forward to hearing your questions, accusations, comments, concerns, and general agreement with my worldview in 2024!
