The Thought Instigator
Apparently, it’s still hip to advocate not making New Year’s resolutions. From so many posts out there, that seems to be a continuing mindset. The reasoning is, so often we make them, then we break them, so let’s do ourselves a favor and not even go there. And there’s something to be said for that. The story here goes into that more in depth.
A couple of people I read have different approaches.
First, let’s accept that New Year’s resolutions are a thing. In fact, there is long history here, going back to ancient Babylonians who held festivities at the new year (then mid-March, or planting season), and folks made promises regarding finances, which they intended to keep. When Julius Caesar changed the calendar to begin the year on January 1, the god Janus is said to have had the ability to look back and ahead, and Romans made positive promises about the new year.
By the 17th century, we’re told, making and breaking resolutions was commonplace. Nowadays there’s a good deal of advice (witness the recent flood of articles) in how to make resolutions – make resolutions that can be kept (not too difficult); make them narrowly focused and thus more attainable (I’ll lose 10 pounds; not I’ll lose weight); be positive in framing them (I will do this, not I won’t do that).
Nowadays we see different takes on how to take advantage of the new year to improve ourselves. I’m leaning in these directions.
One guy I follow is Justin Welsh, a successful solopreneur who has mastered LinkedIn for developing his following and subsequent business success. He claims that about 90% of people won’t follow through on their resolutions. He suggests, as an alternative, to set anti-goals. Simply, instead of trying to do some new positive thing, eliminate negative things you’ve been doing, and as a result become more positive and effective in the process.
This follows a possibly growing trend of doing the opposite of what is traditionally thought to be the way to do things. Entrepreneur Tim Ferris advocates for that, such as keeping a schedule opposite of what everyone else does in order to stand out and gain more attention. As for resolutions, he says he stopped making them in exchange for a past-year review. Go through your calendar week by week and make lists of the positives and negatives. Whittle the lists down to the top 20% and the worst 20%, and then pile up on the former and dump the latter for the coming year.
Sounds like similar trains of thought, both worthy of consideration. I’m going to do something even more different. And that is to resolve to accomplish a two-minute exercise every morning, based on the idea of another person I follow, Neil Pasricha. Neil is a hearty advocate for the popular tenet of living intentionally, a concept I thoroughly embrace. My take on that, the nutshell version, is to live deliberately, in balance with my core positive values, and to focus on simplifying my life and further appreciating that which I have: my family, my friends, my home, my stuff. Surround myself with people who share similar values and avoid those who choose negativity over positivity.
I came across Neil by listening to yet another guy I follow, who runs a business and life philosophy website and newsletter and podcast from Canada. His name is Shane Parrish, and his website is called Farnum Street. Shane conducts his annual personal report by addressing “7 simple questions to help you reflect on the past year and make the next year unstoppable.”
He is a huge fan of Berkshire Hathaway executives (and fellow reading fanatics) Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and he uses part of their company’s address for his website name as an homage to them. He publishes his newsletter Brain Food, which I’ve been reading every Sunday morning for years, and he also does a weekly interview podcast called The Knowledge Project. Smart dude; his podcast is my favorite.
His basic angle is that successful people have figured out a lot of stuff, so why not let’s pick their brains and get to the heart of the matter, learning some of what they’ve learned, especially mental models (which, of course, is the basic model of our education system, just with his thumbprint). Among his fascinating guests, Neil Pasricha appeared last fall for his second visit, and I listened to them talk as I drove around doing errands and finished the segment during a cranking session on my exercise bike (I’ll ride inside some if it’s too crappy to ride outside). He is thoroughly contagious.
I love reading and listening to smart people. I hope a smidgeon of their intellect and insight rubs off on me. Neil has published several bestselling books, he’s hugely popular on Ted Talk, and he gives speeches almost weekly for corporations and organizations all over. He’s a likable guy who achieved significant insight after living in misery while seeking success and realized he had it all wrong. He capitalized on figuring it out and shares his take on living intentionally through blogs, newsletters, books and speeches.
So, I decided to adopt a practice that Neil recommends, taking two minutes of my day while the coffee perks to perform an exercise that has helped him immeasurably. You can read on his website all about how he came to it, so I’m just going to drop in here the idea. We’re awake for about 1,000 minutes a day, he says. So let’s invest two of those minutes to setting up the day for success by listing 1) “I will let go of…”, 2) “I am grateful for…” and 3) “I will focus on….” Or as he says: “If we can invest just two of them to prime our brains for positivity, then we’ll be helping ensure the other 998 minutes of our days are happier.”
My intention to eat well and exercise more are long-standing resolutions already and likely will be well into the future. Now I’ll see if I can condition myself to doing this new daily exercise, as well. I need to be physically and mentally in balance as I pursue my new career as a freelance writer helping businesses and organizations enhance their brands. I’m quite excited about taking this challenge on. There’s so much yet to discover. Taking this mindful first step each day of 2023 will help me guide that.
How about you? Are you making resolutions this new year? What?