A theme that I am elevating this week applies a slight twist to the idea of New Year’s resolutions, which happen when the year starts over, but are something we can choose to bring into focus whenever we want. Resolutions are infamously considered to be humorous, often half hearted, attempts at creating change goals for ourselves that we usually end up abandoning.
It’s unfortunate, because the notion of setting new expectations in your life, be it because the planet has returned to the same place in orbit it was last year or not, is actually a pretty good one. We’ve just anchored an unhelpful narrative to resolutions as an idea when they’re around New Years, that everyone does them, and most people eventually give up on them.
So easy fix, right? Don’t set resolutions on New Years. Pick some random author’s birthday or a Tuesday simply because it’s a Tuesday, and set your resolutions then. Except, unfortunately, the issue hindering resolutions being helpful isn’t just about everyone expecting each other to give up on them, it’s in the design.
When we set them, resolutions tend to be a directive. Whether they are broad or specific, we usually express them so that they create a rule for ourselves:
“I will read two books” or “I won’t eat ice cream”, or even “I will start exercising more”
Rules, however, have this nasty tendency to push our brains toward all or nothing thinking, something people aren’t famously great at managing well, and a rule in this case is just a future appointment we’re setting to judge ourselves negatively for failing when we ask ourselves, “Did I or did I not do the thing?”
The common joke we all smirk at together in February or March, is that we didn’t, and isn’t it funny how we all want to be someone who goes to the gym regularly or cooks at home more, but we failed? This is followed by a collective shrug, whereupon everyone acts as confessional priests for one another and forgives each other of the sins of not doing “the thing”, and we forgetfully move on into the year.
So what if, instead of shooting for the moon with our dreams for a better us, we acknowledged the default problem with the activity in the first place, and changed what success means?
The problem with new year’s resolutions isn’t that most of us don’t achieve the new, better us that we’re aiming for, it’s that we’re bad at tolerating the fact that we failed when we tried. It’s why we have the jokes, the memes, the passive endorsement that in reality this is a social custom that’s more of a play acting kind of performance than anything useful.
If we know the issue is that many of us fail, how about we set that as the expectation instead of the negative outcome? After all, a primary reason many of us struggle at realizing the changes in our lives that we are seeking is that when we try for that change it doesn’t work, and then we go through a host of feelings and thoughts that compound in us withdrawing from trying again.
What if we instead set a goal with the anticipation for failure, and created reward conditions for ourselves when we do? What could that do for our tolerance towards failing, and our internal sense of morale around repeatedly trying things we know we’ll be bad at?
What methods can you imagine for practicing at moving toward change with the awareness of the potential for failure? How can you break it up into smaller parts, use validation, rewards, social reinforcement, and other components to accompany the truth of failure as part of the learning process? What can help you move through guilt and shame when you don’t do “the thing” for a day, week, or month, so that you can still come back to doing it again?
These are examples of approaches we can use in sessions to help you change how you approach working on changes for yourself, big and small.
To learn more about how we can collaborate together to assist you on your journey toward the changes you want in life, visit the contact form linked below to sign up for a free consultation call!
Sean Sparks Counseling 