I have never created a New Year's resolution in my whole life.
And there are a few reasons for that.
First, we all know New Year’s resolutions don’t work. We’ve seen the stats, from “only 7% succeed in keeping resolutions” to “88% of resolvers fail”.
Second, my long term Vision has always superseded any resolution. I’ve already created a five year Vision that I am living right now – so I’m not even working within the same timeframe as a yearly resolution.
I'm working towards something bigger.
Not just for this one year, but for the next half decade of my life.
Being focused on my own trajectory means that rather than trying to recalibrate one time a year on everything, I’m always thinking about my whole Vision.
Now, I use the New Year to reflect on the stage I’m in along my five year journey, and appreciate all the small, cozy, beautiful moments around the rest and recuperation of the holidays.
Here’s to waking up on Jan 1 and already feeling like a roaring success! ;)
3 Reasons why resolutions don’t work
Resolutions are made in a vacuum
We choose resolutions like we choose pizza toppings. Every year, exercising more, losing weight and being healthier top the list, with drink less, smoke less, and spend less, right behind it. It’s too easy to compare ourselves to others and think, whether consciously or subconsciously, I guess I want that.
Oftentimes we chase after aspirations without taking time to really evaluate them, and ask ourselves… Are these actually my dreams? Or were they projected onto me, or have I outgrown them and they don’t resonate with me anymore?
If you do the work and you peel back the layers and you find out that Yes, absolutely, this is what I want. Then great! Go for it. But then you know you're intentionally & proactively going for it because you really want it.
Most people don't think about that deeply. They want the car, the apartment, the new job.
And if they took a step back, maybe they'd realize they don't actually really want the car or the apartment. What they really want is a feeling of getting stable in their life. Stability could be a car, or an apartment, or maybe it could look like a totally different, 3rd thing, like going to therapy or building more routine or mending relationships.
If you’re just focused on getting the car, it’s a totally different mindset and approach than focusing on creating stability.
You could get the car and still feel unsatisfied. And it's because you didn't realize, it wasn't that you really wanted the car; it’s that you wanted the stability, but you haven’t been working towards that at all.
They’re reactive
Typically, resolutions focus on moving away from what you don’t want, instead of what you truly do want.
I don't want to be stressed anymore. I don't want to be messy anymore. I don't want to be single anymore. I don't want to be a middle manager anymore.
Unfortunately, moving away from what you don't want doesn't automatically mean that you are also moving towards what you do want. Being reactive and negative doesn’t get you any closer to where you want to be.
No wonder so many people fail within the first month of the year.
If there’s no inflection point, you may not be ready for change
There’s really no difference between Dec 31 and Jan 1, continuity-wise. It’s pretty arbitrary as far as dates go. Researcher Bas Verplanken, professor of social psychology at the University of Bath, has found that the inertia of our habits is almost impossible to break unless we have some kind of discontinuity event that shakes our lives up, so to speak.
When I work with clients, we spend a bit of time talking through the Equation for Change, which says that you won’t feel readiness to change unless your dissatisfaction with your current situation, combined with the strength of your Vision, outweighs your resistance & inertia. In other words, if you aren’t ready to change, you won’t, regardless of the date.
And if you’re like me, the last thing some people want to do on their holiday break is to reflect on heavy life stuff and set new expectations for themselves.
If this is one time of year where you get to unplug, then it might be super important for you to do that, and to not be setting resolutions that you’re already anticipating failing at. It might be the right time for some people! But just because it's December 31 doesn't mean that that's the right time for everyone.
With an always-on Vision, you’ll know when to carve out the time and protect it. You’ll know when the time is right to revisit it, whether that’s December 31 or any other of the 364 days in the year.
The New Year is still a wonderful time to reflect – Why Vision instead
Without the pressure of dissecting all the things I need to improve in my life, I can reflect and refocus on my Vision during this time of year. Where are things in alignment and where are things not in alignment? What am I really focusing on my Vision right now? What's intentionally deprioritized? What haven’t I started working towards yet? I approach these questions with curiosity and kindness, instead of judgment.
Why Visioning is more successful than resolutions
Visioning takes into account every aspect of your life, and how they impact each other.
Opportunities for achievement, success, growth and change become limitless, instead of binary pass / fail.
Visioning ignores groupthink and is reflective of your personal intentions, no one else’s.
Each facet of your Vision is tied together
When we make resolutions in a vacuum, another complication happens: it impacts other parts of our life and can knock those out of alignment.
Many Visionaries come to me having spent years focused on their careers, and are ready to balance this with the other facets of their life. When you spend years with your personal growth and care on the backburner, a Vision really helps us remember that we're creating something for our whole life, not just our work life.
You want to get a raise? Great! But does getting a raise mean you have to work 80 hours a week, have a soul sucking job, or travel all the time?
What impact does pursuing this resolution have on my whole life?
Every aspect of your life is all part of one Vision, like every facet of a diamond: personal, professional, financial, spiritual, relational. These facets need to support each other, because they impact each other whether we want them to or not.
Going through the visioning process sometimes reveals that you want two seemingly conflicting things; for example, work life balance, and financial stability.
What could that look like as a Vision, instead of a set of 2 opposing resolutions?
Maybe in this phase of your life, you embrace the hustle to build a financial bedrock and reap the reward of flexibility later. Or maybe you realize, you really want a better work life balance even over a high paying high stress job. Or perhaps you focus on the types of roles that offer flexibility. Visioning offers that magical, 3rd option that could look like many things to achieve success as you’ve defined it.
Visioning is for you, no one else
We all know that everyone gets a gym membership on January 1. We all know that two weeks later, they're back to eating doughnuts.
It's funny, how we all participate in this societal “inside joke” every year, and we keep consciously repeating this pattern as a group. If we all know resolutions don't work, then why do we keep buying into it?
Visioning helps us step out of that and bring us back to our own core, to reflect on what's deeply meaningful to us and where we are on our journeys.
And it doesn't have to look like anyone else's journey, and that's okay.
Visioning is not all or nothing
We’re humans. It might be inspiring to make a resolution like, I never feel stressed anymore, but is that strategically sound?
The words we choose matter, and Visioning means that we’re able to dismantle unnecessarily high expectations and create a definition of success that is achievable.
For example, I’m more energetic than I ever have been, shows evidence that you're making forward progress without boxing you in. And that evidence may change over time – perhaps you get this energy from exercise, or a new business venture, or hobby.
Visioning opens up multiple doors that pursuing a pass / fail resolution does not.
How to use Visioning instead of resolutions
Visioning is about creating a clear, detailed, intentionally vague and extremely specific description of what you want your life to look like at a specific point in the future. For 2023, it may mean imagining yourself on Dec 31, 2023, and diving into the facets of your life that you value and have grown within over the next year. I help clients craft careful wording to leave their Vision open to opportunities and multiple ways to achieve success on your own timeline. I have found that a longer timeline of five years, offers us the opportunity to dream a little bit bigger, and feel more success over time with a longer runway to enjoy all of your milestones along the way.
Four key elements of a 2023 Vision
It's inspiring. Your Vision has got to get you out of bed in the morning. It’s got to pull you forward in a positive way, drawing you towards the future you’re creating with inspiration and excitement.
It's strategically sound. While it’s important that your Vision is exhilarating, it’s also important that it’s not just a fantasy. It’s got to be at the intersection of inspiring and strategically sound.
It's documented. Writing out your Vision in black and white will challenge you (in the best way possible) to explore, articulate and distill your true non-negotiables moving forward. It will also give you a documented reference point to call you back to where you’re headed when you get off track.
and it's shared. Sharing your Vision unlocks so much synchronicity. I can’t tell you how many messages I’ve gotten from clients whose Visions started becoming a reality faster than they ever expected once they shared it with others. Sharing your Vision also helps keep you honest about what you really want, especially when you come up against pressure to let those things go by the wayside.
Overcoming the resistance
What is it that slows the January gym momentum to a trickle by February? Why can’t inspiration alone shift our inertia?
If we don't take time to really look at that resistance, it won’t matter how much we post gym selfies or take out new memberships.
If there's some deeper resistance to exercising or eating healthier, then no matter how much you shout that resolution to the rooftops it's not gonna stick.
Because you haven't addressed what's really holding you back.
When we understand the resistance, we can minimize it and neutralize it.
Ask yourself, what’s going to propel me forward towards this? What is going to hold me back?
Maybe actually it’s body image issues that are preventing them from getting into the gym. If those aren’t addressed first, new Lululemon pants won’t help it.
Shift the order of operations, and focus first on reducing the resistance that’s holding you back. Yes, it sounds like a lot. But remember January 1 is an arbitrary deadline. Your whole life is ahead of you, and this is the important work.
There’s an assumption that since Visioning is about creating your future, we start with the future in mind. But we’ve got to understand how you got to where you are, understand where you are now, and only then are you really ready to look into the future and decide what is both inspiring and strategically sound moving forward.
Small steps compound in both directions, so choose success
Celebrate incremental growth.
There’s plenty of psychological research showing that building small habits can compound into larger ones. When we break our steps down into smaller, more manageable ones, we feel more successful and thereful more motivated to take more steps.
When we don’t address that resistance first, then it creates what I call a failure hangover, where if you fail at going to the gym today, and let yourself down, then, well, what makes me think I'm going to be able to do it tomorrow?
And that failure bleeds over into the next day. And the next day, until you stop going altogether and call up to cancel.
Or, you can bask in what I think of as success afterglow.
You have your definition of success for the day, even if it's just at the tiniest, little incremental thing. If you hit that definition of success, then it bleeds over into the next day, and you wake up already feeling a little bit more optimistic about hitting it again.
This creates a virtuous cycle you’d be happier to repeat.
Here’s to a successful 2023
Remember, you’re human. Your definition of success is yours, and no one else’s. Instead of binding yourself to a resolution that feels hollow, use this end of the year time to reflect on the ways in which you lived your Vision in 2022, and how you’ll celebrate that alignment going into 2023.
If you’re looking for more personal guidance on this process, call me.