New Year’s Resolutions

It’s that time of year where we pause our hectic lives and press the imaginary reset button. Of course, we know those reset buttons by their more familiar name, New Year’s resolutions.

Time to say goodbye to the could-have-beens and the should-have-beens for the current year. Time to look forward to the what-could-bes and what-should-bes. I’m talking about a new year. And in a year in which so much was canceled and delayed due to COVID-19, we are all looking forward to the first day of the new year.

While I’m not sure about New Year’s resolutions, January 1st is a vestige of the days when the Roman Empire lorded over much of Europe and the Middle East and imposed the Julian Calendar upon its global empire. To this day, New Year’s celebrations hold a special place in American culture that is ingrained from a young age.

As schoolchildren, we are given January 1st off each year, though it is neither a religious holiday nor a national holiday recognizing a solemn occasion such as Veterans Day or Memorial Day. Our earliest memories of the holiday are probably going to bed while our parents stayed up very late with friends well past our bedtime. Eventually, we reach the age when we stay up until midnight for the first time, and it feels like a rite of passage.

As part of that rite, you may have even proclaimed a resolution or two. While people choose many different types of resolutions, a good many are based on self-improvement. Starting January 1st and continuing into the new year, we will be healthier and better people. We will exercise more. We will eat better. We will be nicer to all people—strangers and friends alike. We will save more and spend less.

Until we aren’t.

Until we don’t.

But that’s the goal when we make those resolutions.

Since a young age, I have been fascinated by these New Year’s resolutions, and over time, my thinking has changed. Like the aforementioned, I dabbled in proclaiming New Year’s resolutions from time to time when the feeling hit me. But as I have aged, I have re-thought the wisdom of a system built on the calendar year.

Let’s use exercise as an example. Imagine my resolution for the new year is to exercise each and every day. The trick with resolution goals is that you don’t want to make them so difficult that the objective isn’t achievable.

During my time at General Dynamics, I worked with a machine shop in Maine and became familiar with much of their staff. Among those I got to know well was their master scheduler, Scott, who helped organize and direct a running team in his spare time. Scott was so dedicated to exercise and running that, in the calendar year in which he received a titanium hip replacement, he still managed to exercise 360 days that year. This man had surgery to replace his hip and only missed five days of exercise—and not all of those five days were at the time of his hip surgery! It is fair to say nearly all of us are not like Scott and will miss more than a few days of exercise this year.

I mention this story to highlight the risk of setting yourself up for failure. If your resolution is to exercise every day in the new year, this puts an immeasurable amount of pressure on you. What happens when you get that severe case of influenza that puts you in bed for a week? Are you going to force yourself out of bed to exercise? What happens when your family or your job has an emergency and needs you for two or three days straight? As I recounted in this piece here at the Army Wife Network, my 9-year-old daughter, Eva, suffered a concussion and was kept at the hospital overnight. Granted we were out hiking and exercising when the accident happened, but what about the next day? As a parent, how would you feel about prioritizing exercise over your child who had been discharged from the hospital that day?

New Year’s resolutions are a form of goal setting. When forming these goals, ensure they are positive and incremental. There’s an old saying in life that you should under-promise and over-deliver. Goal setting and New Year’s resolutions should be no different. Set resolution goals that will result in a slightly better you. If your goal is to exercise once a week and you exercise twice a week, you will feel great for hitting your goal as well as doubling your goal for the week!

Stephen Covey became famous during his lifetime for his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Beyond learning the seven habits, which you should, is the underlying lesson from Covey’s strategy—habit building. Habit building allows you to incrementally improve your life today so that, over the course of a lifetime, you will continue that habit and roll up a lifetime of improvement. If you are someone who routinely goes a week without exercise because of work, kids, and life, then your goal/resolution should be exercise once a week during the calendar year. If this is your goal, do not look at it as easy. If it were easy you would have achieved this goal in the prior year.

Recognize your resolution goal.

Respect your resolution goal.

Establish a habit.

Repeat your habit.

Achieve your resolution goal.

Please remember to not get discouraged. Having run more than 10 marathons (and none of them exceptionally well), I am struck by my experiences and memories at the finish line. While continuing to walk and stretch after finishing, I frequently engage fellow finishers regarding the task just completed.  I cannot tell you how many individuals look and sound defeated when recounting their original time goal and the time in which they finished.

I always take the approach that if only 0.5% of Americans have completed a marathon (26.2 miles), I’m doing something right if I’m part of the less than 1%.  Whether it’s running marathons, exercising once a week, or any other resolution goal, folks can be too hard on themselves.

I would like to leave you with a final suggestion.

Forget about New Year’s resolutions.

It is forecasted that 3.2 million American deaths will be recorded in 2020. Some were folks like you and me who perished in a car accident, while others were diagnosed with a disease that took their lives within months. Those 3.2 million Americans will make no resolution goals on Jan. 1, 2021. And this is the biggest problem I have with New Year’s resolutions.  It creates a system that allows us to put off self-improvement until next year when there is no guarantee of next year for any of us.

Furthermore, if your resolution goal is to exercise once a week or call your mom and dad once a week and you fail on your resolution goal during the third week of January, are you allowed to re-declare your New Year’s resolution on January 23rd? No, you have to wait more than 300 days to get back on track to healthier living. That’s crazy!

As I said in my December 2020 piece at Army Wife Network, you can decide to change your life every day. There is no reason January 1st should hold us captive to its magic. And for those of us who have trouble allowing ourselves to set life improvement goals on a Tuesday in the middle of March, perhaps use the first of each month to either set new goals or re-affirm existing goals that you want to continue.

This will allow us to fall off our respective wagons and then get right back on them without missing the benefit of the better part of a year. For any of those 3.2 million American who were waiting for Jan. 1, 2021 to become a better person, their opportunity has been lost.

Don’t miss your opportunity.

Carpe Diem—seize the day!