New Year’s Resolution
It's been a while since I first wanted to gather my thoughts, my own experiences, discoveries and give them a more coherent form; to compile them in a way that brings me clarity and has a chance to be useful to others.
Today I'm gonna mess with your holidays a little bit, since I've chosen a topic that brings mixed feelings to many of us: The New Year's resolution.
And that's because we all have the tendency to aim for many things, if possible starting from tomorrow, next week, next month, or even next year and statistics show that very few of these objectives are successfully fulfilled.
I'll choose to look over these resolutions from three needed, albeit not necessarily sufficient, angles:
The Clarity of our situation
The Gratitude for what we have and what we are today
And being Realistic with our goals
Clarity
Realistically, we cannot aim at something if we're not fully aware of our starting point, of our current situation.
And this period fits us wonderfully, since we have time to relax, to observe ourselves, our wellbeing, our results for the ending year, our health, relationships and anything else we see of value.
To notice, without harsh judgement, what actions we've taken during the year for the betterment of the above mentioned points, not to punish ourselves further for not doing enough, but to reflect on our tendencies: what worked well and what didn't, and learn something from it.
Gratitude
Even if we feel we're in a good place, or we're struggling a little bit we need to stop and appreciate what we currently have and how far we've come.
Not because of our outstanding achievements or our glorious evolution, but especially because so many people around the world don't come even close to what we have, and this exercise grounds us in reality and helps us tame our self criticism a little bit.
Realism
If we've done this assessment in a calm and balanced way, we are now ready to choose our targets for the next year.
Describe them well, preferably in writing, so that conditions for failure are clearly stated, no more than 3 or 4 objectives.
Better to do 3 out of 4 than 2 out of 7.
And the places where we'll put most of our energy in the coming year will need to result from the above mentioned choices.
However, if it were so easy these things would already be done :).
Most likely we need to change a few things, some behaviors, habits, maybe the way we make choices, with more awareness, all being aligned with what we desire to accomplish.
Habit formation is worth taking into consideration because this single thing greatly reduces the amount of daily negotiation with ourselves, freeing a ton of mental space, giving us a boost for the day and a solid foundation we can build on.
I highly recommend Atomic Habits to all of you who want to give themselves a serious chance on implementing new habits effectively.
And, to be honest, we don't need to wait for 1st of January to start working on anything from our list; if nothing else, we'll be a little tired and tipsy during that day.
I'm glad you followed me until this point.
And wish you all inspiration in the choices you make, the energy to work hard on what matters most to you, lots of happiness, joy and Happy Holidays with your loved ones!
