The Year in Review

I have a natural inclination to roll my eyes when people talk about New Years Resolutions. Love it or hate it, the cultural baggage associated with the term is that a resolution is a task that people will stick with until February or March and then abandon until the next new year.

In a sense, I think there is potentially a lot of value in this type of practice, but it has to be modified substantially in order for it to actually bear fruit. Here are my proposed modifications that have actually resulted in meaningful change in my own life.

• Not Just New Years - Self-reflection should be an on-going and continuous process. Things like the holiday are certainly great external stimuli to encourage us, but at the end of the day, when you make a project of yourself, it behaves just like any other project. You have to continually check and see how it is going. If you have build systems into your life for regular self-awareness, this isn't some special chore to do - it's who you are.

• Ditch the Shame - Shame is synonymous with these resolutions. "I need to lose weight / get off social media / etc." The first step in my process when I look back over a year is to ask myself, "What did I enjoy this year?" You would be amazed how many people struggle to answer this question. (That, in and of itself, is a much-needed data point, but I digress.) Much of my planning is figuring out how to keep doing even more of the things I enjoy. For me, positive motivation like that works tons better than the typical self-flagellation, which will only hang around for a couple of months. Relationships based on guilt or fear (even our relationship with ourselves) are not a recipe for longevity.

• Ditch the Shame - Part II - Curiosity - Getting rid of the shame is somewhere between difficult and impossible. If you could just "will it away," I wouldn't need to write this. What worked for me was replacing it with something else - curiosity. Let's say I made a goal to eat pasta no more than once a week. Let's also say I totally screwed that goal up - loaded up on pasta several times a week. I'm at a real fork in the road here. I could say, "I'm such a weak-minded glutton." Hell, that might even be true, but does that type of mental dialogue get me any closer to my goal? Absolutely not. If I said that, then I have both a performance problem and a self-worth problem. The other way is to get curious. "Ok, I keep eating pasta three times a week. Why? When do I eat it? What nights of the week? What other things happens on those nights? How do I do if there are substitutes for pasta? If there's none in the house, will I go out and buy some?" This type of curiosity is at the core of "hacking mindfulness." We want to figure out how to we work so we can work better. If you train yourself towards curiosity, over time, the judgment part will start to fall away.

• Get Specific - I frequently tell my employees that a plan, without any specifics, is just a wish. I believe this whole-heartedly. In many instances, I see people come up with goals but no specific steps to get there. In martial arts, we spend a lot of time talking about how you have to get to a specific goal. It has to be something measured externally; if its internal or vague it is too easy to delude yourself. Instead of saying "lose weight," try "get down to 165 lbs by June 1." The second one is a specific measure with a time frame. With those metrics, you can start thinking strategically about how to get where you are going to go. You've abandoned the aspirational brain and engaged the tactical one. This is a huge transition and gives you some real data about methods, success, and failure.

• Be Realistic - Last but certainly not least, be realistic in your goals. I think this is where people really sabotage themselves. Setting sky-high goals may be great for a Hollywood screenplay, but rarely do they pan out in the real world. In a sense, behavior modification is a lot like video game design - you have to make the level challenging, but allow the player to be successful enough of the time that they want to keep playing. Make the game crushingly hard and most people will walk. If you are 270 lbs and a healthy person your height / build is 180 lbs, do not make your goal 180 lbs. Aim for 240 lbs. 30 lbs is one hell of a change, but doable for someone with that much extra weight. If you hit that goal in April? Great. Adjust it again... by another small, achievable increment. As you reflect on your goals, don't be afraid to adjust them, either. A couple years ago, I made it a goal to play a guitar piece in honor of my father. Only issue? The piece in question was way above my skill level. I quickly learned that there were four fundamental skills I would need to learn before I could go after it. Instead of agonizing, I adjusted my goal. I'm almost, two years later, to the place where I can take on the original goal. If I'd held onto it, it would have just been another failure.

I hope you try these methods out. Self-reflection and behavior modification are not just "feel good self help" trends. Look at many serious professions - doctors, nurses, soldiers, lawyers, law enforcement, firefighters... the list goes on and on. They all do this type of self-reflection, very seriously, and for a good reason: it gets results. Mastery over your day to day life is the pathway to finding the life you want, and it has to be highly intentional for it to work.

Good luck on the path.