Returning from Texas, it was time for the New Year.
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I do believe in having a direction.
A reminiscence came to me while preparing for this post. It came up twice actually. I was reflecting on relationships and I recall later when things weren’t going well with my wife.
She would say something to the effect you’re not the person I knew, you’ve changed, why can’t you be like you used to be?
If you think about it, you shouldn’t be the same as you were at 25, 30, 40, or any other age. Hopefully you’ve grown, adapted, and changed as everything around you has as well.
If you fight and resist change, you limit yourself. You need to grow.
You often hear people give the reason, we grew apart, when asked about their divorce.
I don’t discuss it, because it isn’t anyone’s need to know. It happened. It is in the past.
I do know that in looking back you have to be careful, because your memory isn’t as good as you might think. In fact it is manipulative by design.
Your memory is a construct based on your current belief. It is made to support your belief, not necessarily to be accurate. So you have to be careful overly relying on it.
This brings me back to resolutions. We make them to improve ourselves, which often means fixing something we perceive to be broken or in need of repair. For example, weight loss, more exercise, or reading more.
At the start of the year we look back to see what we think needs improvement based on a potentially false memory and set a goal that is fixed, definable, measurable, and time based.
Then, time passes, everything changes around us, priorities shift, and we fail to achieve our fixed, unchangeable goal. It doesn’t make us feel good. In fact it depresses many people and leads them to believe they’ve failed.
This is the problem I’ve found with most things. We don’t account for change despite its being inevitable.
This is why I focus on conditional routines instead of fixed ones.
It is also why I’ve adopted broad based goals such as improved health. I can implement small improvements, assess outcomes and make adjustments as necessary. This iterative process places the emphasis on the journey instead of an end point. I’ll never have perfect health, but my health will get much better.
In this way, I don’t ever accomplish a goal and then think, well, maybe it isn’t all I thought it would be, or now what?
You shouldn’t desire to be what you once were or had, instead, figure out who you want to be and make that your pursuit. You’ll find with growth, you’ll refine who you want to be as you better understand what gives you genuine satisfaction.
My resolutions, there were none, but my focus was on My Health, My Relationships, and My Professional Career.
The third is more complicated and I’ll post on that in the future.
Lesson Learned
You need to embrace change and change with it. You need to pursue growth based on finding genuine satisfaction in what you do, and then find more ways to do more of it.
Question for You
Do you set a New Year’s Resolution? How has that worked for you?
Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker 