
Do you make new year’s resolutions? Should you?
It is a custom to make resolutions for the new year to improve ourselves, to make a change or to achieve some specific goal. Still there are people who are strictly against making these commitments around the beginning of the new year. I think both perspectives are right, for their own specific reasons, but I will make the case that if you feel making a new year’s resolution, go for it.
It is often said that if you want to make a change, build a new habit, you don’t need to wait for January the 1st. And this is perfectly true. Why wait for an artificial date to start doing what you want? There is a rule, or rather suggestion with starting a new habit that I have found not so long ago and it is a powerful one: there is no day one to start a habit. Whatever it is you want to do, do it now. Do it on day 0. Don’t wait even until tomorrow, do it today. Of course there are circumstances when you physically cannot start your thing today, still at least prepare for it. In every other case, do it the day you formed your desire, your commitment to the new habit.
Let’s say you want to start exercising or stop drinking alcohol. Do the first 10 pushups today, and do not buy or consume your beers during your evening movie. Starting immediately keeps momentum and puts your thoughts into action, physical manifestations of your plans. Seeing progress, your first steps on day 0 are hugely motivational.
So to start anything new, you do not need to wait for a specific date, a certain alignment of stars or even for perfect circumstances. This is especially true with waiting for the perfect circumstance because they will never be perfect. There is always something that interferes with our plans. The important thing is to start, to make the first steps, even when they are not the best solution, the best way of doing them.
Another thought underpinning this concept is that movement brings inspiration and motivation, not the other way around. Have you ever found yourself waiting for inspiration or motivation to start your new creative project just to end up empty handed? Yea, me too. Countless times. To be frank, the muse might come, and you might make your most inspired work, when she comes. But she comes at her own will, whenever she wants and it might not be the time we want her. We cannot control her arrival.
To test this, think of the tasks or project that you have been putting off for while, set yourself a timer for half an hour or even 20 minutes and start doing it. You only need to do the thing for the time you have set for it, once the time is up you can stop. Doing this, I bet you will find inspiration to come more often than just waiting around for it. It is difficult to think about all the steps and options that are involved in a new activity, but by doing you immediately have tangible results. Results and progress are the best motivators.
All this is to say that if you want to start something do it immediately whenever you want, do not wait for external factors to allow you to do it.
So what is the deal with new year’s resolutions? Even though you can start a new habit any time you want and you can use tricks and best practices to get over the first hurdles, it still might prove difficult the begin. So we might turn to some further help, which could be the beginning of a new year.
We could imagine this time to be a new blank page, a reset. No matter what happened in the previous year, we get a new chance to make the change we want to see in us, or perhaps in the world. I know this idea of a blank slate is a bit idealistic, but as I said, we might need all the help we can get.
Striving for an ideal is not a bad thing. Aiming for something big, something profound can provide the initial spark to begin, which then can burst into a flaming passion. After all, some of the biggest changes in human history have beginnings in striving for an ideal. Abolishing slavery, equal rights for women and men. Even though we have not achieved the end goal of what we’ve started out to achieve, the changes that have been implemented along the way have made the life of millions better. The ideal, whatever it be, can fuel our movements and activities to get closer to that goal. Even after making so many improvements, there is still room, and still a need to make improvements.
My point is that it is useful to aim high, strive for ideals and even though, the new year does not bring a completely, truly blank slate, we still have the power in us to turn our lives around.
Simply the idea of starting fresh, as a new year starts, can give that little boost of confidence, motivation to get up on the 1st of January and start our project. Start that new habit we have been putting off.
Another thing that can help us with the resolutions is the knowledge that we are not alone in these. A lot of people make new year’s resolutions. Even though their goals and projects might be completely different from ours, the thought that there are others out there struggling the same way as we do with our tasks, can provide some comfort and resilience in times of difficulty. Even better, if we can find friends or like minded people who try to achieve goals similar to ours can be even more beneficial. We might cheer each other on, exchange tips and ideas.
One such experience for me was starting Inktober this year. I wanted to pick up the habit of drawing regularly and to complete the Inktober challenge. Before this, I haven’t really drawn regularly. But the idea of doing this with millions of people, and seeing their new works day after day, drawing for each prompt inspired me. Motivated me to carry on and join them in the adventure. Full disclosure, I have not completed the challenge. Still, the experience of taking it on, and being part of a community changed something in me. I realized I can draw. Obviously not very well, but I can sit down and do my part, create a couple of drawings. Since then, I do occasionally, maybe semi regularly sit down and just draw. Not for a specific challenge, but for my own enjoyment. At least, starting Inktober pushed me over the edge to start building a habit. Kind of this was the goal all along, to have some sort of habit.
A lot of people say that they don’t want to make a resolution because they will give up anyways after a couple of months. Which, statically speaking is true. If I remember correctly, a very high percentage of people stop after a month. So what? Even if you keep up with your new habit only for a month, during that time you did something that you wanted to do anyway, cause that is why you made the commitment to begin with. That is more than you have done before. That one month was worth it. Just like in my case with drawing, that start, those couple of tries might lead into something else, something new, be it a bit less regular habit, or a new perspective on how you want to do things. It is like striving for that ideal. We might not achieve it ever, deep down we even might know that we will never achieve that ideal, but striving for it still can yield meaningful results.
If you want to make a new habit that requires you to do something regularly, like every day, or every week, the most important thing is to not stop completely when you miss an occasion. That is fine. There is nothing preventing you from doing it the next day or week. I know it is very discouraging, but you can do it. You can continue from where you stopped. However small, you made progress already. You were doing the thing that you wanted to do. Just try to remind yourself of why you have started the whole thing. Why did you commit to it?
It is important to remember, you are doing this for yourself, not for others. It doesn’t matter what they think of you because you missed a day. Honestly, probably no-one is thinking about the fact that you have missed a day. I wont’t for sure. So you can pick up from where you left it, like nothing happened.
Well, this is it for now. There is a lot still that can be said about resolutions and habits. Maybe I will come back to this topic later on. Already this has been quite a long piece, and if you read this, thanks for sticking with it ’til the end.
I’m not sure, if I actually made a good case for making New Year’s resolutions, but let’s hope this had som inspirational value, for someone at least.
Until next time. Take care.
Mátyás