Episode 16: How to Set A Flaky New Year's Resolution (That you'll be sure to abandon by February 1st)
If you want to set a New Year's Resolution that is guaranteed not to last more than a month, look no further for the ultimate guide--I'll show you exactly how. In this epsiode, I'll teach you how to focus exclusively on the actions you need to take, how to criticize yourself, and and how to maintain rigidity in your plans to ensure that you lose motivation to achieve any goal in a matter of weeks. I bet you can't wait to learn these secrets! Or, if you want to set a long term goal and actually achieve it, I'll share 3 (opposite) tips for how to do that too. If you want a good chuckle and also some ideas for how to inspire yourself to make a positive change in your life this year, this episode is for you.
Links:
Free Forgiveness Class
I'm teaching a free forgiveness class Friday, January 10th on zoom.
It's called "Rewrite Your Story."
Think New Thoughts Academy:
Join the Think New Thoughts Academy to get help applying the tools you're learning on the podcast.
January Workshop: More Than Just the Tip of the Iceberg: How to Leverage Your Thoughts and Emotions to Set and Achieve Goals.
In this workshop I'll guide you through some written exercises to help you set a meaningful, purpose driven goal, how to get curious and compassionate with yourself when you fall short along your journey, how to generate the emotions in advance that will fuel you toward what you want to accomplish, and how to invite God into the process.
100 Thoughts for More Joy
Wanna think some new thoughts? Here are 100 of my favorites that you can try out. Be warned, though. Choosing to really, truly believe even one of these thoughts could drastically impact the way you view yourself and others, and might completely change your life. :)
Full Transcript:
You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 16. How to set a flaky New Year's resolution that you'll be sure to abandon by February 1st.
I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.
Hi there. How are you? I want to begin with a quick announcement. I mentioned this last week on the episode about forgiveness. I'm teaching a free forgiveness class on Friday, January 10th called Rewrite Your Story.
It's a 45 minute live webinar on Zoom where I will guide you through a framework that you can use over and over again to help you let go of anger and resentment about things that have happened in your past. Forgiveness is a skill. You can learn how.
You can get better at it the more you practice. And I'm super excited to give you some tools to help you release heavy, negative emotions that are weighing you down. There's a link in the show notes of this episode or go to emilyrickscoaching.com slash forgiveness to register for this free class and get it on your calendar.
Your future self will be so thankful to your current self for signing up. So go do it. Okay.
Happy New Year. Now you might think as a life coach who cares a lot about optimism and positivity that I'm a big fan of New Year's resolutions. I'm actually not.
I don't set them and I don't believe that they actually work for most people. Here are some statistics I looked up in preparation for this episode. I'm not sure how they measured these or how accurate they are, but it's interesting to think about.
Google says 23% of people who make New Year's resolutions quit their resolution by the end of the first week and 43% quit by the end of January. And I learned there's a holiday called quitter's day. Did you know this quitter's day observed on the second Friday in January in the U S and several countries marks the point when some begin to re-evaluate their New Year's resolutions coined by data analysts studying fitness app usage patterns.
This day highlights a common trend where enthusiasm for new goals starts to wane. So second Friday in January is called quitter's day. So that's like two weeks that most people last keeping up a New Year's resolution.
So I have three tips for you today. If you want to be one of those quitters, there are actually dozens of strategies for how to set a goal that you'll never achieve. But today I'm going to focus on three that I think are particularly effective.
All right. So tip number one, focus only on the actions you want to take exercise five times a week, cook a healthy meal every night, wake up at 6 00 AM every day, read scriptures for 20 minutes every morning, focus on just the action and visualize making yourself do it. Rely on sheer willpower every day to get yourself to the gym or organize the garage or plan that event or whatever the action is.
Don't factor in your emotions at all. Whatever you feel, just make yourself do whatever you don't want to do. And that's that do the exercise.
Don't eat the sweets, clean out the closet, force yourself. No matter what don't take any time to assess anything fluffy, like what you think or feel or need those non-quitters, those idiots who actually accomplish what they set out to do. They spend time thinking about the purpose and meaning behind their overall aim.
And they put time and energy into cultivating thoughts that will create feelings that will drive the actions they designed for themselves to take, stay away from any of that garbage, or you'll be making progress on your goal for months. Tip number two, to make sure you fizzle out on any goal in just a few days or weeks. Self-criticism is the key.
Criticize yourself as much as possible along the way. Until you've accomplished something really big, you're worthless. Right now you're lazy, disorganized, unsuccessful.
So you need to set goals to whip yourself into shape. If you want to lose weight, make sure you do it because you hate your fat, ugly body. Set a goal to pay off debt just to make up for how irresponsible and unwise you've been with your money in the past.
If you want to grow your business, focus on why what you have right now isn't enough. And tell yourself you will not be worthwhile or successful until you have achieved more. This will produce self-loathing, discouragement, inadequacy, and shame.
And this cocktail of nasty emotions will help you want to avoid even thinking about your goal, no less making progress on it. So criticize yourself as often as you can, especially when you fall short. Be super annoyed that you don't have the willpower or self-discipline to stick with it.
The resentment this will create in your relationship with yourself will help make sure you are one of the quitters by January 10th. You'll be worn out, frustrated with yourself, and feeling ashamed that you've failed yet again to follow through on your ambitions. So stay away from anything that looks like compassion or curiosity for yourself.
If you want to be a quitter, you got to beat yourself up and be exasperated with yourself for any shortcomings. Here's my third and final tip for how to be a quitter. Don't write your goal down anywhere.
And for heaven's sake, don't review your goal on a daily or weekly basis. Don't find out what's working and what's not working. Don't make any adjustments or changes to your original plan.
Rigidity is key and an emphasis on failure. Either you measure it up today or you didn't. If you didn't measure up, why keep trying? Most importantly, whatever you do, do not pray about your goal.
Are you kidding? Why would you want to invite the help of an omnipotent being who loves you and has limitless wisdom, strength, and capacity to help you achieve your goal? He doesn't want to hear from you until you've accomplished something important and proven your worth. There you have it. Three tips for how to set a flaky New Year's resolution that you'll be sure to abandon by February 1st.
Focus exclusively on the actions you need to take. Criticize yourself as often as possible. Don't write down your goal, make any adjustments, or pray about it.
Okay, that was fun. So now let's flip those around and I want to share with you three strategies for how to actually set a big goal and also encourage and motivate yourself along the way so you can achieve it. So number one, start with the result you want to create.
To set a goal, start with the result line of the model, right? C-T-F-A-R. Circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result. And when you set the goal, you start at the bottom on the result line.
And before you brainstorm or commit to any actions that you're going to take, think about what you really want to accomplish and why. What is your overarching aim? What will the impact be of the changes you want to make? How will it benefit your life? How will it benefit others? Why is it important? Why do you want to dedicate energy, time, or other resources to this endeavor? So that's your R line, your result. And people say, my goal is to exercise five times a week.
And I'm like, no, that's not your goal. That's an action that can help you reach your goal, which is something bigger and more meaningful than the exercise itself. Maybe your overall aim is to have more energy or to sleep better or to lose weight or manage stress.
And exercise will help create those results for you. But the exercise itself isn't actually the goal. Or let's say you want to declutter your home.
Great. What a lot of people do is just start determining actions. Okay.
I need to clear out the garage and the basement, go through my photos, organize the coat closet. My goal is to get all that done. So I'm going to declutter for an hour every day for a month.
And if this works for you, great, keep doing it. It just doesn't work for most people because we're human beings and we have thoughts and feelings and we get overwhelmed and cranky and distracted. And part of reaching a goal is managing those parts of ourselves and coming back to our big picture when we lose motivation.
So if I want to declutter my home and I go beyond the actions and write down the big picture of what I really want, maybe I want more space, more openness in my mind, more possibility in my life. And I know I'll experience that if I have fewer physical objects cluttering my shelves and drawers. Maybe I want to spend less time looking for things and it'll be easier to find stuff with less clutter.
Maybe I want to embrace a new season of life and there are some physical objects that are holding me back. And so I want to release them so I can step into the next chapter of my life. Once I've written these things down, now I feel purpose and meaning and deep motivation for why I want to invest time and energy into this project.
And this is what I will come back to when, notice I did not say if, when I don't feel motivated to spend an hour decluttering because I'm tired and it doesn't sound fun. When that happens, I can come back to my deeper why to inspire myself and recreate the emotion I need to take the action that will help me reach my goal. Do you see how the action is part of the goal but it's not the goal itself? That's super important.
Okay, number two, if you want to set a goal that you actually will achieve, be curious and compassionate with yourself if you don't take the action that you said you would. Most people get mad at themselves like, ugh, why didn't you wake up when you set your alarm and go exercise? Why didn't you follow through to spend that hour decluttering like you said you would? This is actually a great question to be asking, but if you want to make progress on a goal, ask it from a place of curiosity rather than from a place of frustration. Like, huh, I wonder why I didn't follow through.
What emotion was I feeling when I didn't spend an hour decluttering like I said I would? What was I thinking that was creating the feeling that led to that inaction? Get curious and find out why. Be fascinated with it and allow yourself space to experiment and find what will work in the end. Failure is actually a beautiful part of the process if you allow it and get curious about it.
Finally, if you want to set a goal and actually achieve it, make adjustments to your plans and pray for guidance. You don't have to be rigid. There are hundreds of ways to reach your overarching objectives.
So if the actions you planned in the first place aren't really working out and don't feel fun to you, make a change. Make an adjustment. I like to tell my clients you probably don't need more willpower to reach this goal.
Maybe you need more creativity of how to make your goal more fun so you feel more excited about doing it. Also, and finally, if you really care about a goal, pray. Invite God into your goal.
Pray for clarity and wisdom and inspiration and strength beyond your own. Pray for God to help you create this result so you can glorify him and help others and grow and learn in the process. He wants to help you.
Okay, so here's the recap. How to set a flaky new year's resolution that you'll be sure to abandon by February 1st. Focus only on the actions you need to make yourself take.
Criticize yourself as often as possible along the way. Don't write it down. Don't make adjustments and don't pray about it.
If you want to set a meaningful long-term goal that you will actually achieve in time, determine your big picture objective and then view the actions you will take as one way to achieve it. Be curious and compassionate with yourself as you lose motivation and fall short, which will definitely happen, and then review your goal regularly. Make creative adjustments to make it fun for you to keep working on and invite God into your journey.
If you want to go deeper on this and really apply it, come join the Think New Thoughts Academy. Our January workshop is coming up and it's called More Than Just the Tip of the Iceberg, How to Leverage Your Thoughts and Emotions to Set and Achieve Goals. In this workshop, you'll learn how to set a meaningful purpose-driven goal, how to get curious and compassionate with yourself when you fall short along the way, and how to generate the emotions in advance that will fuel you toward what you want to accomplish and how to invite God into the process.
I'll guide you through some written exercises that will be a game changer for how you think about and set goals. The live workshop is on Tuesday, January 7th at 10 a.m. on Zoom, and members have access to the replay as well. I'll put details in the show notes, so come check that out if you want to go beyond the tip of the iceberg in your goal setting.
Or you can not come check it out and celebrate Quitter's Day, the second Friday of January instead. Just kidding. Kind of.
Okay. Happy New Year, my friend. I'll talk to you next week.