TODO: remember to change the dates on the posts and update links accordingly
This is the first in a series of two posts on New Year's resolutions and achieving your goals. This post will help you determine whether a resolution is right for you in the first place. If it is, the next post will help you set an achievable one and actually get it done.
Around this time of year, many of us have just decided on a New Year's resolution — a promise to ourselves that we will be better in the year to come.
Unfortunately, many of these resolutions fail. We stop going to the gym, stop journaling, stop pursuing our relationship goals, stop eating healthily, stop budgeting... The list goes on.
I suspect that much of what goes wrong with New Year's resolutions comes down to one simple question: Do you actually want to do the work?
"Of course I do!"
Not so fast.
Of course, you want the outcome. The lost pounds, the satisfying relationship, the well-managed budget. It's easy to want those things.
But if you had to decide right now, do you want to put on your sweatpants and go to the gym? Do you want to have that hard conversation with your significant other? Do you want to take out your bank statement and review your spending for the last month?
Maybe, maybe not. And therein lies the key distinction: you want the outcome, but that wanting has no bearing on whether you also want to do the work necessary to achieve the outcome.
A mentor of mine once wisely told me that it's possible to want to want to do something without actually wanting to do it, and in my view, this distinction is where many New Year’s resolutions go wrong. People resolve to do work they want to want to do, but that they don’t actually want to do.
So I ask you — and this is a genuine question — right now, do you want to do the work, or do you just want to want to?
If it's the latter, you'd probably be better served by a New Year's theme, which is far easier to find success with than a resolution. Instead of setting expectations for yourself that you might not even want to work to achieve, themes guide you towards becoming a better version of yourself through the decisions you already make every day.
But if you actually want to do the work right now — you want to go to the gym, have that hard conversation, review your spending — then you might consider a resolution.
Wanting to do the work is still not always enough to guarantee that you actually do it, though. Think about the last time you wanted to do something difficult without a plan in mind: how did that go? (And your desired outcome will be difficult to achieve, right?)
To guarantee success — or as close to it as you can manage — you need to make a plan. You need consistency and logging, which I discuss in the next post.