New Year's Day is the ultimate holiday for chronically
optimistic growth junkies, like me.
I cry easily and often, enjoy bouts of melancholy, harbor fears about how my deepest desires may never be realized, and yet... At the end of the day, I'm still a young golden retriever who just knows she's about to get taken on a WALK! Limiting beliefs are over-short leashes and too-tight collars. Self-destructive habits are like being stuck inside a tiny apartment with no windows. Naps are wonderful, but being stuck inside all the time -- is prison. And it will probably lead to the chewing of couch cushions. So, the way I see it, New Year's can be about getting unstuck, about getting our real needs met, and about making sure we have appropriate outlets for our energies.
I cry easily and often, enjoy bouts of melancholy, harbor fears about how my deepest desires may never be realized, and yet... At the end of the day, I'm still a young golden retriever who just knows she's about to get taken on a WALK! Limiting beliefs are over-short leashes and too-tight collars. Self-destructive habits are like being stuck inside a tiny apartment with no windows. Naps are wonderful, but being stuck inside all the time -- is prison. And it will probably lead to the chewing of couch cushions. So, the way I see it, New Year's can be about getting unstuck, about getting our real needs met, and about making sure we have appropriate outlets for our energies.
Arbitrary as it may be, when the calendar year changes it
feels like everyone in the Gregorian universe is yelling "DO-OVER"
all at once! All the unfinished tasks on the whiteboard can be squeegeed
off, leaving a wondrously blank space for new plans (and better obscene
stick figure drawings). And as we realize that we will never write
2014 on an overdue rent check ever again, we are reminded that we too
are capable of updating our lives so radically that some aspect of our current
selves could be forever changed -- it's both scary and exciting.
What will be the vehicle for transporting us between the outdated versions of ourselves and our future upgrades? Resolutions.
What will be the vehicle for transporting us between the outdated versions of ourselves and our future upgrades? Resolutions.
As costumes are to Halloween, resolutions are to New Year's
Day. "Goals" get set all year, but who's making a personal
"resolution" on 5/17? Individual resolutions feel like the
special province of the hopeful 1/1 holiday. Implicit in the word itself
is the sense that we now possess the fresh resolve needed to
bring our new plans to fruition. However, according to several internet
articles I've read (no citation, but there were studies involved, promise) less than half of the people who make New Year's resolutions, keep
them.
I am neither a psychologist, nor a scientist. I
do have an abundance of thoughts and feelings, and an established practice
of observing and analyzing both. Calling upon my 35 years of research and
testing in the field of being me, I have devised a hypothesis for how I might
find myself among the small-ish percentage of people who do follow through on their New
Year's intentions: I'm not going to make a resolution, I am going to commit to
a year long experiment.
Reframing the idea of "making a resolution" as
"committing to an experiment" may just seem like a semantical
game, but for me the switch is a game-changer. While setting a goal, or
making a resolution, draws heavily upon my willpower -- running an experiment calls upon my curiosity, and my curiosity can arm wrestle my willpower to the
floor any day. My curiosity is also better able to expose my
true motivations for wanting to make a particular change in my life.
One of the things that bears examination when we set a goal
is what pre-determined assumptions we may have secretly built in to it. If we've created a weight-loss goal for
example, are we assuming that we will have better self-esteem, or better luck
in love once we succeed at losing weight? What if, upon meeting the
weight-loss goal, we don't experience the things we've unconsciously assumed we
will? What will we have learned? Will the "success" feel
strangely hollow? And if we fail to meet the goal, what will we
have learned?
What if we reframed a weight loss
goal as an honest experiment, and asked ourselves -- How will my life change if I lose
25 lbs? Or instead of making a resolution to lose 25 pounds, what if we
ran the experiment -- What is the funnest way I can lose 25 lbs this year?
Experiments with open ended questions can lead to all kinds of
discoveries, and ensure that we will learn something valuable along the way
regardless of whether we fully meet our original goals or not. Equations
where the only outcome potentials are failing or succeeding feel stressful, and
boring, to me. Unknowns excite me towards continual engagement in a
pursuit of answers. I'm hypothesizing that this is exactly the kind of
intrigue I need to help me stay committed to my 2015 experiment.
The relationship between keeping commitments and building
trust is strong and direct. Thus, I have to take commitments seriously, including
those I make to myself. I am not only the two-year old golden retriever
who desperately wants to go outside and sniff around; I am also the dog owner
coming home tired from work thinking that going outside in the cold rain sounds
terrible, while sitting on the couch eating chips sounds awesome.
Ultimately, my willpower and my curiosity have to be friends.
Regardless of how we frame our efforts, when we create a New Year's challenge for ourselves there will likely be the need to push past inertia, overcome the habitual, and exit the comfort zone. The great thing is that when I force myself to take my figurative dog out for a walk in the rain, I almost always end up really liking it once I get going. And even if I don't, I get to keep my couch cushions intact and we have somewhere to sit and cuddle when we get back. I'm committed to my dog's wellbeing, so my dog tries to behave well -- trust builds, and the relationship deepens and sweetens. Yes, this is all a big, sloppy, floppy-eared metaphor for self-care and self-love. My inner child is a puppy.
Regardless of how we frame our efforts, when we create a New Year's challenge for ourselves there will likely be the need to push past inertia, overcome the habitual, and exit the comfort zone. The great thing is that when I force myself to take my figurative dog out for a walk in the rain, I almost always end up really liking it once I get going. And even if I don't, I get to keep my couch cushions intact and we have somewhere to sit and cuddle when we get back. I'm committed to my dog's wellbeing, so my dog tries to behave well -- trust builds, and the relationship deepens and sweetens. Yes, this is all a big, sloppy, floppy-eared metaphor for self-care and self-love. My inner child is a puppy.
The very best part of viewing resolutions through the lens of the scientific method is that it naturally leads us away from the kind of unhelpful self-judgement that so often crops up when we want to improve ourselves. Commonly, not achieving a desired outcome will leave us asking -- Why can't I do this?! And then answering ourselves with some variation of the devil's favorite phrase -- Because you're not good enough. If we choose the role of curious researchers, we can instead say -- Hmmmm...How might I do this differently; what variables should I change the next time I run the experiment? A chorus of much kinder, more interesting voices can then start making suggestions.
Based on many years of previous experimentation, one thing I know for sure is that working on changing something about myself out of love feels different from trying to change so that I will become more lovable. Overtly, the goal might look the same, but internally, the results will vary substantially. It takes work to unearth our true motivations; it takes work to build inner trust; it takes work to identify our changing needs and desires, and even more work to healthfully fulfill them. It is this work we can undertake with renewed willingness and inquisitiveness at the beginning of each year.
Based on many years of previous experimentation, one thing I know for sure is that working on changing something about myself out of love feels different from trying to change so that I will become more lovable. Overtly, the goal might look the same, but internally, the results will vary substantially. It takes work to unearth our true motivations; it takes work to build inner trust; it takes work to identify our changing needs and desires, and even more work to healthfully fulfill them. It is this work we can undertake with renewed willingness and inquisitiveness at the beginning of each year.
At its best, New Year's Day can be a holiday that's about
creating opportunities for movement, exploration and joy. I'm looking
forward to a year of dedicated investigation. Hello 2015, let's go
for a walk...
