New Year, New Skills?
Setting New Years Resolutions That Set You Up For Success
A great example of overly-vague resolutions that may not be setting you up for success.
The new years resolution. The easiest goal setting behaviour to dunk on.
For that reason, I am going take the arbitrary high road that I just created in my mind and in fact, not dunk on it.
I personally like new years resolutions. I also think they get a worse wrap than they deserve.
The bigger issue I see, is people’s relationships to them and to goal setting in general.
The common theme of bouncing from one extreme to another.
Problematic new years resolutions usually come in the from of expecting the that a new year will be the driving force to achieve and maintain large scale behaviour change for that person.
When in reality, a lot of folks “fail” at their resolutions before they’re even habituated to no longer referring to the current year as the previous one(the pandemic makes me feel like it’s still 2020).
The reason for this I believe, is because behaviour change is damn hard. Harder than anyone would like to admit. Largely due to the phenomenon of even small, seemingly benign changes being hard to make.
Do you wake up and check social media first thing, as if it was a reflex? You’re not alone in that. I struggle with that to this day.
My solution was to literally delete certain apps off my phone or even put my phone in a mini jail I bought for it.
This seems embarrassing. I’m a 27 year old man and I have to put my phone in jail in order to not mindlessly scroll.
I could pull myself up by my virtual bootstraps and say “I’ll just stop using it”, but if history is any gauge of efficacy here, that would most likely be a futile strategy.
Instead, I needed to literally hide my phone and delete my apps off of it in order to reduce my use and form new habits.
Then, even when my new habits have formed, it’s still good habit hygiene to limit my use and apply these strategies in moderation to avoid falling back into old habits.
All of that to just use instagram less.
And we wonder why behaviour change is hard.
If we extrapolate this out and try to apply radical behaviour change over night with the catalyst being a new calendar year, we see why this so commonly doesn’t work.
This model routinely sets us up for failure. But, it’s a failure we know. So we come back, year after year.
With this in mind, I am going to try and help you reframe the new years resolution.
Instead of a New Years resolution, I suggest adopting a “new year, new skill” approach.
You’re probably not going to change your entire way of being this year.
But you can absolutely learn, develop and apply a new skill or set of skills this year.
The best case, is if that skill can directly or indirectly transfer toward the results of one of your main goals.
Say your goal is to eat a more nutritious diet.
If that was your goal, but your strategy was simply to “just eat better”. This probably wouldn’t be a very successful strategy.
It would be more productive to actually establish which skills you’re lacking in that hold you back from eating a more nutritious diet.
Say you have no clue how much calories, protein, fat or carbs are in your typical diet.
With that in mind, learning the skill of tracking calories and macros could be powerful.
Or, say you eat rather fast and this gets in the way of you monitoring your portions.
With that in mind, learning and practicing the skill of eating slower and more mindfully could have a profound impact.
See a broken down template of how you could do this below.
In both of these examples, you’ve highlighted your area of opportunity and set a specific intention and habit toward improving that skill.
Adopting a behaviour change approach such as this is far bettern than just imposing radical change is in my experience. Especially in the long term.
There are just two barriers to get over:
1. It’s just not sexy.
-Real behaviour change is hard, unrewarding at times and quite slow
-There is no “12 week transformation” in all likelihood
-There is no “secret” that you’ve just simply been missing out on
2. It requires that you fight your extremist urges.
-If this article has resonated with you, I’m sure you’ve adopted more extreme approaches in the past (I definitely have). If this is true, there will most likely be a STRONG urge to repeat history. And this strategy above is the polar opposite. It’s key to remember that real change is deeply uncomfortable at times, potentially even painful and takes time.
If you’re able to get over these barriers and solidify your new skill, then congratulations! You’ve now earned the right to do this all over again, but with a different skill (Yay!).
Sound like a lot of work? Well, that’s because it is. It takes working smart and hard combined with being patient, having self compassion and also having a support system to help you along the way.
Where I may have lost you is the fact I’m suggesting you factor all of this in, just for small behaviour changes.
Which to that, I say you’re exactly right.
If this shit was as easy as simply “having more discipline” or “just wanting it more”, then success rates for new years resolutions and lifestyle interventions in general would be higher.
But they aren’t.
Because behaviour change is fucking hard. This is something you should accept if you plan to actually change your habits. That way you can set yourself up for success and also have some compassion for yourself along the way.
You can’t just shame yourself or others into changing. Well, technically you can. It’s just not in a healthy way to do so.
You probably don’t want to take better care of yourself due to fear of being screamed at (literally or through your own inner dialogue).
Rather, you most likely want to take better care of yourself as a practice of self love and from having a higher self view.
Because you’re worth investing the time you need to eat, move and rest appropriately.
Because you’re worth setting and maintaining protective boundaries for.
Not because if you don’t do this, “you’re a lazy piece of shit.”
I’ll end this by summarizing my main points:
For the millionth time (even I’m tired of saying it), behaviour change is hard. With that in mind, it’s not impossible.
Rather than opting for radical changes overnight, I suggest applying specific skill acquisition that transfer into your larger goal.
Within that specific goal, addressing the area of opportunity for honing that skill is a great place to start
Once you’ve gotten that skill down, try working on another one that will also compliment your goal.
Fight your potential urge to adopt another extreme
Have some self compassion
Lean on your support system (this involves communicating your goals to your loved ones/support system)
Accept that this change will take time and will often feel unrewarding and uncomfortable.
I believe this strategy and way of framing a new years resolution is a fantastic way to help facilitate the change you’re looking for, but in a more realistic way.
Here are some additional resources that can help you with your goal setting and habit strategies:
Article: How To Effectively Set Your Fitness Goals
Article: Struggling to Stay Consistent? Set a BAM Target.
Podcast Episode: Goal Setting: Our Driving Forces & Forging The Right Path
Happy New Year,
Coach Dylan 🍻