This time of the year it’s popular to make a list of new year’s resolutions -- things we want to start doing or things we want to do better at in the new year. Familiar ones are losing weight, exercising more or spending more time with friends and family.
While these are all commendable goals, it misses two key points.
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One is that there’s a general, rather than specific, quality to the changes people are looking to make. For example, it’s one thing to say, “I want to lose weight.” It’s a very different thing to say, “I want to lose 10 pounds.” The person with the more specific goal is much more likely to achieve their goal because it’s quantifiable.
- The other problem with most resolutions is that they tend to be so future- focused. Yes, that sounds strange, so let’s explain.
When we focus on changes we want for the future, we don’t normally take into account mistakes we made in the past and, more importantly, the valuable lessons learned from those mistakes. That’s where the building blocks for change are found.
For example, if we want to exercise more often in 2022, we need to ask ourselves ‘What worked last year?’ and ‘What got in the way of exercising more often?’ (We also need to be more specific with our goal, moving it from ‘I want to exercise more often’ to, for example, ‘I want to exercise four times a week’.)
If we’re able to ask ourselves those kind of reflective questions, we can both maximize past successes and better assess for solutions, rather than making an empty proclamation about change.
So, to use the above example, something that may have worked in 2021 was attending 6 pm spin classes at the gym (assuming your gym was open during the pandemic and offering such classes). For many, the accountability of signing up – as well as paying for a class – is critical to following through with exercise.
When we think about things that got in the way of exercising more often in 2021, two possible reasons were boredom or extended hours at work.
Maybe you got tired of only going to spin classes and didn’t jog outside often enough. Perhaps you allowed the demands of your job to bleed into your evenings and you stopped attending those 6 pm classes.
These are issues you may not have even been aware of until it was months down the road and you “fell off the wagon” with your exercise routine.
In short, we first need to look backward, not forward, if we want to make lasting change in 2022.
