New Year True You

New Year’s Resolutions: the hot topic for January. A lot of the content I see highlights why New Years Resolutions don’t work. While this may be true for most people most of the time, instead of focusing on why they don’t work, I want to direct the focus of this article to the ways New Year’s Resolutions can be helpful in living more fully.

The new year presents a powerful opportunity to reflect, self-assess, and consider if how you are living is aligning with your values. Consider…

Do your actions promote a sense of vitality, or contribute to a lackluster life or even a life of suffering? 

Are you showing up in ways that brings bliss, or are you caught in a pattern of avoidance, fear, and self-doubt?

Are you fulfilling your greatest desires, or are you shying away from them?  

Resolutions Should Serve Your Values, Not Your Self-Critic 

New Year’s Resolutions are most powerful when focused on aligning your behavior to your values, not as a means to try to invent a new or ideal self. Said differently, New years Resolutions are most effective when they are about helping us take concrete steps to create a full, vibrant, authentic version of ourselves rather than as an opportunity for the self-critic to capitalize on a sense of inadequacy and exploit it. So the concept of “new year new you” really would be more effective and meaningful if you could work on seeing the new year as a time to encourage more aligned action with the “true” you. And by true you, I mean the you who is taking the action which is most truly aligned with your values. 

So instead of “loose 15 pounds” (self-critic derived New Year’s Resolution) one might focus on a more concrete value-derived resolution like “each day, ground myself in my value of health and take 3 actions aligned with this value such as eating a balanced diet, moving my body, or mindfully eating.” 

A System of Developing a Value-Driven New Year’s Resolution

There are many effective systems for reflecting on the year that just passed and planning for the year ahead. My favorite is the year compass (https://yearcompass.com). I encourage you to check this out. Other useful tools can be bullet journaling and habit setting (SMART goals and books like Atomic Habits and Miracle Morning can help with this).

Here are the five ingredients I think are essential for developing your own system of reflection and intention setting:

1. Reflect. Looking back on how you spent your time, energy, resources, and mental space in the previous year (or other designated point of time).
2. Connect to Your Values. Come in contact with your “values”, meaning the personal attributes that represent the kind of life that feels most fulfilling. Values should be personal, in that what lights you up may be different than what lights me up. They are not concerned with good/bad, right/wrong, morality, or worth. They are like the ingredients of a compass that help point you towards the path of vitality, richness, and meaning. Examples of values are love, authenticity, environmentalism, activism, beauty.  
3. Hone in and get specific. Here is where you will identify a specific value-aligned behavior you want to embody, and get specific about how you’re going to do it. SMART goals can come in handy here (and if you don’t know what a SMART goal is, google it. so useful!). 
4. Unhook. Getting specific about aligning your actions with what you want will likely elicit unhelpful self-limiting beliefs. It is helpful to unhook from these thoughts, meaning to notice them as a part of your experience but not let them consume your focus. 
5. Accept. There will also likely be uncomfortable feelings that come up when you start to move in the direction of your values. It is useful to make space for the uncomfortable feelings that come up. Living authentically in a value-aligned way is not a fearless pursuit. It is a courageous pursuit. One of my favorite definitions of courage is “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear (FD Roosevelt).” You can align your actions with your values little by little by making space for fear and uncomfortable sensations while eliciting courage. 

This is how this system looks in action using myself as an example: 

1. To reflect, I used a combination of the life compass, bullet journaling, and ACT principles.
2. I have decided for the new year that the behavior I want to embody that is most value-aligned is the act of putting myself out there through writing, with intentional and consistent commitment. Why is writing value aligned for me? It is an embodiment of many values including self-expression, authenticity, creativity, self-discovery, contribution, vitality, and freedom. 
3. Now I get specific: I will meet this goal through writing at least 15 minutes daily, ideally more, in the morning before my baby wakes. If he wakes early, I will write in the evening. Writing is only part of the equation for my valued life, though. Another major component of the resolution is to put myself out there. I will accomplish this through posting a blog each week for the entire year. 
4. This is a bold commitment and as I type the words, I notice the self-doubt, fear, and hesitancy creep in. My thoughts say “don’t commit to this. You will fail to execute and then embarrass yourself…” or “if you fail to post weekly, your self-critic will berate you.”… or “even if you post weekly, you’re going to be putting out a ton of crap content. You want to contribute something novel and of use, not a bunch of clickbait garbage.” I can notice these thoughts and not attach to them because I am going to focus more on aligning my actions to the me I want to be (one who is taking meaningful, intentional action) rather than the unhelpful thinking. I am going to focus on courage. I can also focus on more useful thinking that emerges, like “this will be imperfect, you may fail, you may embarrass yourself, and you may create and post content that is not your best, but this is all in service of you growing, improving, and aligning your actions with your values.” 
5. I notice my heart pounding, my stomach turning, and my throat constricting. Fear is here. Self-doubt is here. I have come to view these uncomfortable emotion’s and sensations as my personal gifts. More often than not, they are signals that I need to call on courage. They signal I have an opportunity to turn towards and create a vital life.

So here I am, boldly committing to myself and the internet, to write daily and post a blog every week. See you next week.