An Anti-Resolution Approach to Making Change in the New Year
Have you ever set a New Year’s Resolution? Doesn’t it feel like torture? No matter the size or impact of it, it’s something that you enjoy that you’re no longer allowing yourself to partake in. Something that was bad for you like smoking, drinking, unhealthy diet, excess weight. Or it’s something that you want to add to your life like exercise, meditation, creative practice. On paper these seem like good things to stop or start, but why do we wait until this one moment in the year and why is it so hard to make the habit change and stick?
We start with good intentions but drop the resolution before we’ve been able to change the habit and end up feeling worse about ourselves because we’ve failed. Resolutions don’t encourage long term, growth-oriented change, but instead model the boom-and-bust cycles found in fad diets and fashion crazes, leaving us more depleted than ever. This resolution hangover makes us feel worse about ourselves, reinforcing old patterns of self-doubt that discourage us from continuing the work to reach our goals.
Now, don’t get me wrong… smoking will kill you, too much caffeine is not good either, maybe you have a health condition that requires you lose some weight. These are long term lifestyle changes that you need to make and keep, not resolutions you can force yourself into. Waiting for the new year will not help. Forcing yourself to do something your brain doesn’t want to do and then punishing yourself when you don’t stick with it will not help. What will help is connecting with your purpose for making these changes, along with a big dose of self-compassion and patience.
Instead let’s focus on making purposeful change. Whether you start to make this change on January 1st or November 22nd, either way good for you!
Here’s an example from my own life…
In late 2019 a workshop leader asked me “what’s a change you want to make in your life in the next year?” Without any forethought out popped from my mouth: “I want to get really good at coaching.” Those words started me on my own journey of discovery… one that led me to the coach and the community that have become my biggest teachers and support system. A journey that is still developing. Throughout that year I found this sentence to be a very helpful north star that allowed me to investigate and find the spaces where I could begin the practice of getting really good at coaching.
I gave 2022 the word “discovery” - exploring and discovering myself and what was next in my life and my work. I’m beginning to recognize that 2023 will be about “planning” a big move, as I’m looking to move out of a comfortable and safe corporate job and into coaching work that is for myself and for the people I serve. This move is my purpose and my guiding north star, I remind myself regularly that it will take time (patience), and that I’m still on a learning journey (self-compassion).
As for making changes around health issues like smoking and weight loss, the best advice I have received is to get very clear on your purpose. Write a list of all the reasons you have for making the change. Come back to that list on hard days when you don’t feel like making the healthy choice.
Here are just a couple resources that might be helpful to you:
Functional Nutritionist who greatly helped me reverse a diabetes diagnosis: Krista Barlow, MSN, CHHC
Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Quit Smoking (also: Drinking, Gambling, Emotional Eating, and others). Helped my husband and I quit smoking for good.
And how about you…
What is your north star? Your purpose? What direction are you headed?
What do you want to focus on in 2023 to move in that direction?
Where will you need patience and where will you need to give yourself some grace?