Quit your New Year's goals yet?
There's still time if you're willing to act today! đ
My posts have been pretty serious since the time I wrote about veteranâs suicide, up until now, and rightly so â but I think weâre due a little bit of silliness, donât you? If you wanna read something thatâs just light and entertaining, but still has a good moral waiting for you at the end, please, read onâŚ
Side note: I know - most people write about giving up their New Yearâs Resolutions in January⌠but weâre not most people, are we?
Actually, I did write this post last month. But then life happened and I had other things I wanted to share with you. This is still good stuff though, and this is probably the last week I can get away with publishing it before it becomes too dated.
So, without further ado, I give you, âWhy New Yearâs Resolutions Actually Fail.â (The real reason will shock you!) đ
Every year, I set New Yearâs Resolutions. And every year except for one, I always give them up.
At least I can take comfort in knowing Iâm not alone in my giving-up-ness. According to the questionable reliability of ChatGPT, two-thirds of people who make resolutions abandon them before the end of January, and more than 80% have given up by the second week in February.
And this is now the third week of February, so⌠if youâre going to quit, ChatGPT says ya better do it now, or youâll be sorry! BwahahahaâŚ
(ChatGPT does have a reputation for getting things wrong, or even making things up sometimes, but in this instance, Iâm inclined to think he knows what heâs talking about.)
GPT gives a lot of reasons why people fail to keep their resolutions:
their goals are too vague (or too ambitious)
theyâre not tracking their progress
they donât have a strong support system
thereâs no plan for dealing with setbacks
But I think - based on my own non-scientific but still 100% âverifiable-by-way-of-personal-anecdoteâ way of thinking - itâs just because they set them on the wrong day.
Hear me out:
Every year, everybody who quits their resolutions, originally set them on the same day: January 1st.
Thatâs the day I normally choose to set my New Yearâs Resolutions. And almost every time I do, I end up joining all the rest of the quitters, giving up on all my goals by mid-to-late February, and resigning myself to another year of socially acceptable mediocrity.
But one year, I decided to try something different. I decided that if everybody sets their resolutions on the 1st and then 80% of those people all quit by mid-FebruaryâŚ
I decided that for just one year, I was going to set my resolutions on January 2nd. And it may be pure coincidence - but that is the only year I ever kept my resolutions, and put in the real work thatâs needed to make them happen.
Now, that could also be because of the way I set my resolutions that year:
Instead of making SMART goals like everybody tells us we have to nowadays,
Instead of writing everything down all the way to the last boring, dumb detail,
Instead of picturing myself obtaining the exact result I want, exactly how I want it, with all the right people there and none of the people who I didnât invite but decided to show up anyway, and fixing that image firmly in my mind,
Instead of describing a specific outcome I would absolutely obtain by a specific date,
I thought about the areas in my life where I wanted to improveâŚ
And instead of setting New Yearâs goalsâŚ
I decided I would set New Yearâs intentions.
I didnât think about what I wanted to achieve, so much; it was more like, where do I want to improve this year?
I thought long and hard about what I was lacking in my life, and what I came up with was not that I needed to do more of the things I want to achieve; rather, I needed to develop more of the qualities I want to possess.
I decided I wanted to have more confidence. More kindness. More curiosity. More purpose, meaning, direction, compassion, drive, courageâŚ
If there was a quality, an attribute, or a means of interacting with the world around me that I felt I lacked, I put it on my list. I set a goal to spend the rest of that year cultivating those qualities, seeking to improve my mindset, my outlook, my perspective...
I didnât care what it would all look like.
I didnât set âgoals to achieveâ - I simply set âthings to focus on.â
I set my intention on wanting more⌠and then trusted my intuition to guide me to the people, places, and experiences I would need, to develop the character, qualities, and attributes I wanted.
And that turned out to be the year that turned my life around completely!
That was the year I started going to therapy, and decided to go back to church, and began to explore ways I could use my writing to help others.
It was the year I started figuring out what really matters to me.
The year I got in touch with my real values, and discovered things about myself that continue to shape my decisions and my desires to this day.
Now, in the years since, Iâve gone back to setting SMART goals, and getting specific about every last detail, and putting a âdone byâ date on all my big dreams. Sometimes, I achieve those big dreams. Sometimes, I drop them in the middle of February like a hot potato. Pot-ah-to? Pot-a-toâŚ
Sometimes, they morph into something different, and sometimes they turn out not to be the thing I really wanted, after all. And sometimes, theyâre better than what Iâd anticipated, and achieving one dream lets me set my sights on one thatâs even bigger than I ever couldâve imagined.
I achieve those dreams because I put in the work to set my intention, and develop and understand my character, and my strengths and attributes, and identify the values and the perspective that shapes the direction of my life.
Because I know itâs not just about âachieving the goal.â Itâs about who I become, and what I go through, and the lessons I learn about myself and the people around me, in the pursuit of that goal.
But now, in 2024, instead of the SMART goals, Iâm going back to setting intentions â for the most part, anyway. Itâs been a minute since 2018, and some of my values and dreams and desires have shifted.
Although⌠I do want to grow my newsletter to ten thousand subscribers this year. (So be sure to share this with someone everyone you know⌠nudge nudge wink winkâŚ)
Thatâs probably the only measurable goal I have, though, and even then itâs more âthe direction I want to go inâ than âthe result I must obtain.â
Well⌠actually⌠one impossible goal I have - and hope to achieve in 2024 - is to spend a day, or maybe a whole weekend, hanging out with Tony Robbins. Not as a student, not as somebody who wants to work with him, or buy anything from him, or sell anything to him. Thereâs times and places for all those things.
I just wanna get around him, talk to him, watch how he interacts with other people, and see if I can get inside his head and understand his point of view. Because if I can assimilate even a fraction of Tony Robbinsâ worldview, his perspective, his approach to life, man⌠can you imagine?
But, with the exception of those two ârealâ goals - or whatever you wanna call them - this year, I just want to focus on ideas and intentions.
I just wanna plant seeds in my mind, that these are things that matter to me, and I wanna be open this year to finding ways to spend more time on them. I wanna let the pursuit of these things inform my decisions, refine my character, and reveal to me what it is that truly matters in this stage of life.
I have enough things, achievements, and status, to keep myself satisfied for the next year. (Although⌠I wouldnât mind more status⌠I just canât decide if Iâd rather be a successful business coach or rockabilly cosplayer⌠I mean theyâre both clearly needed in todayâs societyâŚ)
But for real, I donât want to focus on achieving anything, in 2024. I just want to focus on areas where I want to grow, and just⌠make room for the magic to happen. I donât even care what the magic is; I figure thatâll become self-evident as I take the time to bring it to fruition.
So hereâs how Iâve set my âintentionsâ for 2024. You can do something similar, if youâd like. (Although at this late stage you canât really call them your New âYearâsâ Resolutions anymore⌠theyâll have to be New âTen Months Until I Can Try Again and Hopefully Nail It Next Timeâ Resolutions⌠but, I meanâŚ)
I started by choosing five areas in my life where I want to grow. These are the five areas that right now, feel most important to me. So, if youâre following along at home⌠just choose whatâs currently most important, and try to limit yourself to, say, 4-6 different areas or domains.
Next, I assigned five âgoalsâ â or intentions, or areas for improvement â to each one. Iâve ânamedâ each intention using words and phrases that make sense to me, that tell me what that goal is really about (for example, âHall and Oatesâ = I want to spend more time relaxing and listening to music I love, while âVegetablesâ symbolizes just what it sounds like: to be healthier this year, I wanna put more intention on eating enough vegetables).
Again, if youâre following along, you should aim for 4-6 goals for each of your 4-6 life domains. More than that will be way too much! Less than that might actually be more desirable, because it gives you less to have to worry about, but for me, for this year, 5 sets of 5 feels right.
I may not be able to satisfy all 25; only time will tell. But as much as possible, these are ideas or areas where I want to grow and spend my time and attention on throughout the year.
If you were to set a couple of goals or intentions for yourself for the rest of this year⌠what would they be? And why would those goals be important to you? Let me know in the comments (or, if you prefer, you can just reply to this email and tell me privately).
I want to know what your focus is for 2024 â if youâre willing to share.
A wee bit of silliness before we go
Did you know giraffes are 30 times more likely to get struck by lightning than humans? It makes sense if you think about it. After all, how many humans are brave enough to strike a giraffe?
I have not given up in the intentions I set for myself this year. I'm still working hard to see all of my intentions through to the end.