New Year’s Solutions and High Hopes
Resolutions don’t work.
If 41% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions and fewer than 9% achieve their goals by year’s end, how many people will move to Montana this year?
Statistics often make absurd connections. Correlation is not causation. Causes of problems are usually much deeper, going far beyond observation.
Dictionary definitions:
New Year’s resolution: promise to do something different in the New Year
resolve: to deal with successfully
solution: an action or process of solving a problem
The difference between promising to do something to create change and actually solving a problem lies somewhere between a person’s ears.
A wise teacher said to me many years ago, “You behave as you behave because you believe as you believe.” I think she’s got it.
Change is hard. No one would bother with resolutions if it weren’t for thinking change is possible.
Thinking is not doing
Doing something once is not a solution.
Doing the same thing, repeatedly, if it’s the wrong thing, cannot bring about desired change.
Awareness of need comes before any desire to change. And being willing to change is harder than simply thinking about change. So what tips the scale?
Bestseller Atomic Habits
To date, James Clear’s book Atomic Habits: “An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” has sold over 9 million copies. It was the best-selling book of 2021.
Reading, rereading, and applying to myself, the book promotes “tiny changes, remarkable results,” because results are not tied to goals. Instead, the focus is on systems that you and I can create, connecting any desired change to habits.
Choose the habit, the results follow.
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision.”
Atomic Habits, p.22
Lots of ideas to consider and contemplate.
In the Introduction, the author says, “I knew that if things were going to improve, I was the one responsible for making it happen.”
In the margin of that page of Atomic Habits, I wrote something a person close to me repeats and I repeat to myself, repeatedly. “No one is coming.”
No one is coming to rescue me or make me do what I need to do. I have to decide. I need to decide. I get to decide!
Atomic Habits emphasizes:
“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results . . . Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.”
“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits, p. 18, 24
Happy New Year, or not
The winding down of one year and the prospect of a new year lets each of us turn the page, look ahead, start a new chapter, perhaps even begin a new section of the book that is your story or mine.
Anticipation of change for the better replaces the after Christmas letdown. Something shifts. We can pivot. Hence, the resolutions for change bring about high hopes.
These lyrics suggest:
All problems, just a toy balloon
They’ll be bursted soon
They’re just bound to go popOops, there goes another problem, kerplop
Oops, there goes another problem, kerplop
Oops, there goes another problem, kerplop
Kerplop
Well, problems aren’t that simple but neither is the path of least resistance going to lead to positive improvement.
“Systems are about the processes that lead to those [desired] results.”
Referring to sports and how teams compete and have the same goal––to win with the highest score––James Clear makes it clear that “goals cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers,” but rather implementing “a system of continuous small improvements.” He adds that “Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily.”
Which explains why year in and year out, so many of us find ourselves setting the same goals, making the same resolutions, hoping this year to do better. We never changed a SYSTEM where inputs and outputs “fix themselves.”
People Create Problems and Solutions
I create most of the problems I need to deal with. If I didn’t need to eat, or feed others, I wouldn’t have a problem to solve.
For example, the goal to clear countertops in the kitchen begins with tiny changes. Establishing the habits of clearing the table as soon as the meal is over. Remove from workspace all utensils, pots and pans and bowls used in preparation and wash as I go or soon after the meal. Place dirty dishes in the sink. Wash, rinse and/or use the dishwasher. Wipe down all counter space. Empty dishwasher before next big meal. Ta-dah! Tiny compounding changes rewarded with clean and clear countertops.
Freedom to decide what to do allows for bad habits to form too.
Creating this goal links to the value I place on having clean and clear countertops. If I’m okay with the mess, I can achieve temporary results only after moments of inspired action, but the problem is not solved until I adopt a system that establishes the habit.
Why? Because habits are measurable, achievable, and reinforced by the prospect of reward. You and I have agency to create the environment that help us feel on the inside the way we want our lives to look on the outside.
Habits that Reflect Values & Beliefs vs. “Image management”
Beyond what other people can see and evaluate, you and I can create habits that help us grow.
The same person who tells me “No one is coming” has created the habit of scheduling each week a specific time to have lunch or coffee with a friend. It goes on the calendar, an appointment.
I spend the first hour of almost every day reading and thinking because I value this time and have created this habit. I will let the dishes go before I let go of the time it takes me to drink a cup of coffee and before launching into the day with all my good intentions and a TO DO list that I couldn’t finish before bed, even when I was twenty years old.
Each of us values different things and have ways of measuring what matters most to us.
Priorities shift. Year by year, and day by day, we change. Habits we form according to our values and our beliefs shape our lives.
What about personal growth? What about heart and soul? What about relationships?
We all want big changes to come easy. But the truth, habits made and kept, in the long run these tell the story.
