On New Year's Resolutions

As 2019 winds down, people are starting to talk about their goals and plans for 2020. This is a season of reflection, of taking a look at where we are and where we want to be. 

I’ve always been a fan of New Year’s resolutions — I love the feeling of a “fresh start,” of resetting the clock and resetting the score. It’s a motivating and encouraging way to make positive changes.

But in the past few years, I’ve begun to struggle with New Year’s resolutions. Not insignificantly because of working in the fitness industry. Too often, I see people setting weight loss goals or other results-based goals, or worse - framing their resolutions in a way that is filled with negative self-talk. I LOVE that people work towards self-improvement, but I don’t love sending yourself the message that you, as you are right now, aren’t good enough.

It breaks my heart to see stunningly gorgeous women say they’ll be happy when they lose 10 pounds. It breaks my heart to see friends say they will be proud of themselves when they cross the finish line of a race, or (because it’s not just in fitness) when they get a promotion or raise.

Goal-setting, self-improvement and personal evolution are all admirable and lead to incredible things. But there is a fine line between seeking improvement and beating yourself up for not being perfect. And when you tie your happiness, your contentment with an end result, it can trigger a cycle of negative self-talk.

I watched a TedTalk this year, while researching for a big work presentation, that got into why linking happiness to an end-goal gets problematic. In it, psychologist and author Shawn Achor explains:

“…most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting and managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior. 

And the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards … [Because] every time your brain has a success, you just change the goal post of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades; you got into a good school and after you get into a better one, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job; you hit your sales target, we're going to change it. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon, as a society. And that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.”

If we are waiting to be happy, or confident, or proud until we reach some specific goal, we won’t get there. The goal post is always moving.

As counterintuitive as it may seem — the goal is the means to an end, not the other way around. The value comes from the work you put in. The self-confidence you gain from hitting milestones. The discipline you exercise when you stick with a new routine. The goal is the carrot at the end of the stick, motivating you to make the change. 

The other issue I run into with goal setting and New Year’s resolutions is that we tie our identities to our activities or goals — I’m going to “be a person who” wakes up early to work out; I’m going to “be a vegetarian” or “be” gluten-free; I’m going to “be” [whatever new job title] at work.” We work in extremes and we tie it to who we are. That raises the stakes so much higher, and leaves no room for slip ups. If I slip up, I’ve failed, and I’ve not only failed at this goal, but I’ve failed at being the person I want to be. That is a LOT harder to come back from.

In an episode of Hot Ones (a YouTube series where people are interviewed while eating increasingly hotter hot sauces), comedian Pete Holmes gave an example of this that really stuck with me. He talks about being vegan. In the interview, he explains that he is vegan most of the time. But one night he got drunk and craved and ate a Shake Shack burger. He posted it on Instagram with the caption, “2 drinks, not vegan.”

“I was like, ‘it’s important to share the moments where we’re all full of shit.’ … Because right now it’s such a club — you’re either in or you’re out. And as soon as you have a cookie that has eggs in it, you’re out.

If you fuck up, don’t be embarrassed — that’s what we’re all doing. We’re all just tripping, getting up and talking about it, and tripping and getting up an talking about it. That’s what life is.”

And I don’t know about you, but I love that mentality.

Work towards making good choices, but let it be okay that sometimes you’ll mess up. The goal should not be perfectionism, but the resilience to come back from the slip ups.

Or, as Jonathan Safron Foer said in his Armchair Expert interview, “We’ve gotten into this habit of measuring our distance from perfection (which no one is going to attain anyway) rather than measuring our distance from doing nothing at all.”

Let’s measure our distance from doing nothing at all.

So for 2020 (the year of perfect vision), let’s practice measuring our progress, instead of our perfectionism. Let’s set goals that focus on learning and growing and improving, not just achieving a certain status or pant size or lifestyle marker. And let’s grant ourselves a little grace and get away from the ‘all or nothing’ mentality that tends to drive us.

I’ve got a few goals for this next year. One of them is to continue writing more in this blog, and recognize that the fact that I dropped off for a few months does not mean I’ve failed. I’ve got some fears I plan to face, and some ways I want to push outside my comfort zone. But it’s a big year, an election year, where there will no doubt be plenty of polarizing and challenging conversations going on. Let’s try to be kind in the conversations we have with ourselves. Because we’re all just doing our best with what we’ve got.