No more New Year’s Resolutions, please! Some of us are so tired of 2021 that we’re walking into January with a demure swagger! And, others of us are gleefully looking forward to new beginnings in 2022! The first bunch is dragging the old in with the new, and the second bunch is wiping slates clean to start over!
Which method is right? Could it be a mix of both?
How can you start fresh without taking into consideration the lessons learned from the past? Not by holding judgment over your head like a metric stick for how far away you are from success. But, by figuring out which are the best pathways that help you inch closer to your goals and which are the barriers that deter you. We have to start with some level of self-love and acceptance, people, or else none of it truly matters or gets us very far.
The other day I was reading about the Big Five Personality Traits and how they relate to perfectionism. Quite interesting stuff. It got me thinking about New Year’s Resolutions and how often our methods to reach our goals are incredibly mismatched to our personalities. Typically, this leads to more failures, more self-reproach, more issues to solve; on top of the issues we were looking to fix in the first place. When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, many of us take for granted that we know ourselves enough to know the best ways to reach our goals. But, do we really know ourselves enough, to know if our knee-jerk preferences are based on conditioning and biases, or based on our true nature?
Research on the amount of time it takes to form a habit is a bit ambiguous. Some studies citing it can take from 18 to 254 days, and others conclude on the precise number of 66 days. Sixty-six days! So if you started a new habit on January 1st, by March you’d have cemented this into your daily routine! However, most people stick to their New Year’s resolutions for a little over a month. Meaning that most people give up at the halfway point, right when it starts to get a bit more difficult to manage the effort, track the progress, and stay consistent. Falling off the bandwagon is a no-go for many people, especially for perfectionists who hold themselves to high standards, where mistakes and setbacks are considered failures.
What if, before you embark on your New Year’s Resolution- you took a moment to decide on a few notes.
- What do you want? Can you envision yourself having that?
- Can you break down what you want into actionable, small, measurable steps you can manage and keep track of?
- What’s your story? How are you describing yourself? Is it helping or hindering you to reach your goals? Reset your story or your goals accordingly.
- Who is going to hold you accountable? A buddy/group/community? Physical reminders?
- When/if you fall off-track, what are some things you can say to yourself to get back on the bandwagon?
Taking some time to envision your life with this new goal, as well as the small compounding steps you need to take, will help you stay on track. And, when/if the fear of success mongrels comes out to play in your mind, you will have tools in place to keep them in check.
Are you setting goals for 2022? If so, check out this blog where I dive deep into setting goals for the new year.