Happy New Year, everyone! We’re in the New Year already. How did that happen? It seems like it was October just yesterday, and August just last week. But, I’m pretty sure that my calendar isn’t lying to me, and it really is January 2nd.
So, I thought I’d revisit my piece from last year on New Year’s Resolutions, and see what I thought about it after a year had passed.
<Exits stage left>
<Re-reads piece>
<Back to center stage>
Well, you know, not bad. I still basically agree with everything I said last year, which is not guaranteed (because I’m still growing and changing and learning). In retrospect, though, I’m inclined to emphasize the importance of identity and aspirational thinking in achieving your resolutions.
Virtually every resolution I can think of, whether it’s quitting smoking or losing weight or getting in shape or reading more or traveling or saving money or whatever, involves change. “Well, duh,” I hear you saying, “of course they do. The whole point of a New Year’s resolution is to change.” Yes, of course, but the point I’m making is that successful resolutions don’t just involve changing behavior, but also changing identity.
I talked about this idea of changing identity in my previous piece (with respect to my experience quitting smoking), but I’ll expand on it here. As far as I can tell, the identity change that comes along with changing behavior can be one of two types (or possibly both):
- Sometimes, the behavior we want to change is in some sense an inevitable consequence of who we are, and so changing that behavior requires that we change ourselves.
- Sometimes, changing that behavior will inevitably also change who we are, and embracing that new identity can be a valuable part of getting motivated.
To the first point, I remember hearing someone at a recovery meeting very early on say, “The person that I used to be used drugs. That’s what they did. That person will use again, so if I want to not use anymore, I need to become a different person.” That’s exactly what I mean here.
I have had times in my life when I wanted to lose weight; never a lot, but often 10-15 pounds. In those times, I had become a person who valued the extra few bites of dinner (or the dessert, or the snack) more than I valued the feeling of being at my healthy weight, and so I had the extra bites. Losing that weight required revising my values so that the extra food was no longer more important.1
To my second point above, although fear of consequences can be a major motivator, I think that aspiration and hope can be a better one. If I make this change that I’ve resolved to make, who will I become? I discussed this idea as well in my previous entry (briefly), but I think it’s worth talking about more.
If you’ve got a New Year’s resolution, chances are that it’s not about an easy thing. If it were easy, you would have done it already, right? I talked before about keeping going as a way to make things easier, and one of the ideas that resonates most with me from that is the idea about focusing on the end goal. Again, if I succeed at this resolution, who will I become? What about that do I value? What do I hope for? What will I like about having become that person?
It’s easy to say “Oh, my New Year’s resolution is to exercise more” without visualizing what that means. Instead of focusing on the extra time spent going to the gym and the logistics of making it happen, what about that result will be valuable? Will you be able to climb the stairs without breathing hard? Take longer walks in nature? Keep up with your grandkids? Feel better in your clothes?
This is in some sense just a long-winded rephrasing of the old adage, “Keep your eyes on the prize,” but it’s valuable nonetheless. In the moments of difficulty—and there will inevitably be those moments of difficulty—reminding yourself of what’s waiting at the end of the road for you can help keep your motivation up. And, further, clearly envisioning or defining what that looks like can be a useful tool in making it easier to remind yourself about.
If your New Year’s resolution is important to you, it probably means that it’s something that you’ve been so far unable to achieve (or maybe something that you used to have but lost and want to get back). In any case, the person who you are now doesn’t have that thing. Maybe becoming a new person would help you get there.
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- It required more than that, of course. I’ve never personally been successful at losing weight without somehow tracking the calories I eat and the exercise I do. But, that’s mechanics; the only way to have the motivation to execute those mechanics is by adjusting my values. ↩