What to do instead of New Year's Resolutions

0:02 A Listener production. Welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to havevy Happy New Year. Welcome to twenty twenty three. I want to talk to you today about all of the reasons why I am not a fan of New Year's resolutions, and what I think that you could maybe think about doing instead if you have been tempted, as you likely have been, to set New Year's resolutions. In fact, i'd be really interested to hear who still sets New Year's resolutions. Is that still a thing? Do people still really go for that or have we all realized that they are just a recipe for failure and for making us feel bad about ourselves. That's my opinion of New Year's resolutions. However, I am all about goals and setting goals and striving to be the best version of yourself.

0:53 So I did want to share with you today what some of my ideas are for how you can do that without fulling into the trap of dreaded New Year's resolutions. I don't know who has done the studies, but it's often reported that something like eight percent of people are still on track with New Year's resolutions by mid February. They have a very very high failure rate, and this is the problem right. A new year's resolution, by definition, it is a resolve to do something. My new year's resolution is to give up sugar, to drink less, go to the gym more, lose weight, save money, be tidier, be calmer, be a better parent, be more patient with my kids. We have all of this big, long list of resolutions, which by nature are very pass fail. So you either do them or you don't do them. And that's not how goals work like, that's not how progress works.

1:50 Progress is not linear. So we all start off very excited, very motivated. I totally get it. It feels good at New Year to blank slate new year, knew me, let's do something new and different this year. What are all of the ways that I want this year to be different from last year, in the year before and the year before. Now would be a good time to ask yourself if you are not setting the exact same New Year's resolutions that you have been setting year after year after year, and if it hasn't worked up until now, then maybe it's time to think about doing something different. But by definition, by nature, they tend to be this kind of You either do it or you don't, and then as soon as you don't, then clean slate's gone.

2:33 You've mucked it up. You've got to start again, and there's no more New Year. We're past New Year, so I don't know. This is when we start waiting till next Monday, starting again next week, starting again next month, and typically we just stay on this merry go route and we just keep on falling off and getting back on. Having said that, setting goals can be really motivating, Striving to achieve important goals, striving for personal growth can be really a good thing, can really put you on that path to what Maslow called self actualization and even transcendence. So we all are intrinsically kind of wired to want the best for ourselves. We want to be the best version of our selves. It feels good to be going for goals and to have something really clear and very well defined that we are working towards. So there is nothing wrong with setting goals, and I highly recommend that you set goals that are realistic and achievable and that have a timeframe, even if it is twelve months by the end of twenty twenty three, this is what I would have liked to achieve by the end of twenty twenty three. These are the things I would like to have done. These are the things that I have on my vision board for twenty twenty three. And then you've got this whole, big, long stretch of time between now and the end of December to make those things happen.

3:55 And there's space for slip ups and setbacks, because that's why that happens in life. We have slip ups and setbacks. That's the way life works, that's the way goals work. And the more realistic we can be about that, then the better off we will be. Maybe you want to think about where you would like to be by the end of this year, or in six months time, or in three months time. Start setting some milestones and thinking about the goals that you would like to achieve for the things that you would like to do or experience in the next twelve months. When you do that, though, allow me to remind you of what some of the research says about the kinds of goals that are likely to make you happier and the kinds of goals that are not so. Whenever we set a goal for ourselves, whenever we decide we want to do or achieve something.

4:42 It's really about the feeling we're really going for, how good it's going to feel when we make that change, when we achieve that thing that we set for ourselves, we overcome that challenge. We're really going for a feel good factor. Otherwise, why would we bother doing it? But what we know is it. The goals that are most likely to make you feel good in the long term, The goals that are most likely to support your emotional wellbeing, to support your satisfaction with life are the goals that are around personal growth, mastery of skills, contribution, connection, community, intrinsically motivated goals, goals that are really about contributing to a cause or really becoming a better version of yourself.

5:28 But I'm really hesitanting even when I say that that better version. I'll get to that in a minute. The goals that are unlikely to contribute to your satisfaction with life or your emotional wellbeing, your happiness basically in the long run are goals around physical appearance, status, achievement. For achievement's sake, you know, all of those extrinsically motivated goals, those external markers of success that look good, material possessions, accumulation of material goods, more money, losing weight, make money. Things that look good but don't necessarily come from an internal drive that they're motivated purely by how good it looks on the outside, not necessarily what feels good on the inside. And you know, sometimes that's a really that takes a bit of self reflection. Sometimes a goal can kind of do both. It's really important to ask yourself what the real driver is If you are setting yourself a goal, is it truly being driven intrinsically by you feeling like it's something that you deeply desire, that you deeply want, a skill you would like to master, knowledge that you would like to gain, becoming a better version of yourself, cultivating skills, cultivating a sense of mastery, as opposed to just looking good to other people, what you think other people, or what you think is going to impress other people, because those kinds of goals tend to be fairly hollow in the long run. And then what happens, too is, even if you achieve them and it feels good for five minutes, the novelty quick wears off, and

7:00 then you're going for the next thing, and then you're going for the next thing. There's a feeling of never being satisfied, and this is what we call the hedonic treadmill. I get the next thing, you know, I buy the house, and soon enough I'm unhappy with the kitchen. So then I redo the kitchen and that feels good, and then I'm unhappy with the paint and that. You know, we're just on this endless cycle of constantly needing something new to make us feel good as opposed to feeling good on the inside. So growth, contribution, connection, mastery, contributing in a positive way to other people, experiences, life experiences that expand your mind, expand your perspective and your horizons. These are the kinds of goals that feel really good. So when you're setting your goals, just take that into consideration.

7:51 The other thing I was going to say earlier is one of my favorite quotes. If you've been around for a while, you will have heard me say it before. Beware the subtle aggression of self improvement. In other words, self improvement's great, wanting to be the best version of yourself amazing, mastery skills, growth brilliant. But are you being driven by a belief or a sense that you are broken? That you need to be fixed, that you are somehow flawed, that you can be happy with yourself only when you lose the weight, get a better job, make more money, live in a different house, by a different car. Are you being driven by a sense of something being wrong with you that needs to be fixed? And look, I'm all about personal growth, I'm all about self improvement. But the truth is, and you'll know this yourself, that a lot of people who are on a path to self improvement are driven by a and you may experience this yourself, by this feeling that there is something inherently wrong and you can only fully accept yourself, only be happy with yourself if you change something about yourself. Ideally, we want to be accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now.

9:04 There is nothing broken, there is nothing that needs to be fixed. By all means, if you want to do something because it feels good for you, then you should do something that feels good for you. But if you know that you're being driven by some sort of feeling like you are not okay, and that you feel like you can't truly accept yourself and really like yourself and feel okay with yourself until you fix something that's broken about you, then you might want to rethink, like what is going on there? Maybe? Then the goal for twenty twenty three is to really focus on cultivating that self acceptance, self compassion, some self kindness and trust me. Self compassion and self acceptance does not mean that you will suddenly become lazy and slack and that you will let yourself off the hook, and that you will turn into a lazy, unmotivated person who engages in a whole lot of unhealthy behavior or gets really lazy and slack. It is not the case. Self compassion and self acceptance is the starting point for any kind of positive change. If you want to change yourself, improve yourself, become a better version of yourself, you have a more likely chance of achieving that when you start from a place of accepting yourself as you are and being okay with yourself exactly as you are right now, being compassionate with yourself, because then you'll be able to tolerate those setbacks and slip ups that inevitably happen when you are on a path to changing anything. Anyway.

10:38 Another idea for thinking about how you want to approach the new year, and this is a very popular idea it is coming up with a word for the year. So the idea of a word for the year, it's this idea that you think about what the overall theme is like of the areas. I guess that you would like to focus your energy and your attention on this coming year. And it might be that you're thinking, you know, you want to simplify your life. It might be that you're feeling really stressed. There's too much stuff in your house, there's too much stuff in your calendar, there's too much pressure, it's too busy. It's wardrobes are overflowing, draws are overflowing, and so maybe simplify becomes your word for the year.

11:21 Here's one that I had a couple of years ago. My word for the year was clarity. I really felt like I was a bit all over the shop with what I was doing with my business and with my work. It was a bit of this, it was a bit of that wasn't really sure where I was going with my life, where I wanted to live at the time. So clarity for me was about getting really clear about what my priorities were, what I want to be doing, not just with the next year, but with the next five years, with the next ten years. So these things are bigger than just a simple goal. They're like an overarching theme for everything else that you think that you might want to do or achieve. It's really fun, to be honest, it's fun to think about not just in terms of goals, but then kind of ask yourself, what is it about that goal, What is it about that thing that I want to change? What am I hoping that I will get from that? And then coming up with this kind of overarching word for the year or this theme that runs through all of those very separate, potentially different goals or activities or actions or experiences. What's the thread that runs through all of them, what's the theme that kind of binds them all? That can be a really fun one. And then the important thing is to remember your word, to stick it up somewhere, to remind yourself. Often, because I have definitely had years where you could ask me in March what my word was.

12:33 I was very clear what my word was on the first of January, and then it got completely forgotten. Interestingly, though, sometimes later when you look back, even if you don't hold the word at the front of your mind, sometimes it's really interesting to look back and realize that actually that word kind of did run through quite a lot of the experiences or the things that you did or achieved for that year. So maybe a word for the year could be one that you want to think about. And then, as I said, having some sort of a buck at least a vision board, just a bunch of experiences that you are focused on for the next year. Maybe you want to read more books, see more movies. Maybe you want to spend less time on your phone, spend more time face to face with people instead of just interacting on social media. Putting up some kind of a vision board some of you, you can put up a visual representation of what that is. It can be words, it can be pictures. I love a vision board. If you've got goals, things that you want to achieve in your life, whether it's this year or of whether it's in the next like I said, two, five, ten years, put them up on your vision board. It can be amazing the clarity that you get from a vision board.

13:35 It's a very creative thing to do as well. And again sometimes I find vision boards can have a little bit of magic about them, and before you know it, the things on your vision board start to appear in your real life, so you can use Pinterest as your vision board if you're not one for sticking up a corkboard on the wall. I've done versions of both where I've had a whiteboard or a corkboard up on my and I've got lots of pictures and photos and words stuck on it. And I've also used a Pinterest board online to do a similar thing. So that's a really personal preference. I hope that that has helped to give you some ideas for what you can do to really kick off the new year, and a way that feels inspiring and motivating for you, but not in a way that you are setting yourself up to just fail or feel like you've failed when you actually haven't failed. I hope that that helps you to create a vision or to create some ideas for how you want the next twelve months to play out. And remember the subtle aggression of self improvement. Let's just rethink some of those goals and ask ourselves, are we coming from a place of self acceptance and feeling inspired and motivated and compassionate to ourselves, or are we coming from a place of feeling like we need to be fixed because we're somehow broken or we can't accept ourselves. And if that is the case, and I really hope that more self compassion is high on your list for twenty twenty three. I cannot wait

15:08 to catch you in the next episode of Crappy to Happy listener