#34 The Good, Bad & Ugly of New Year Resolutions

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU HEAR

• “I’m over the New Year Resolutions crap. That stuff is only done by show-offs and type A highly driven people.“

• “I don’t believe in New Year Resolutions. I’ll fail at them anyway so why even try? Just live your life.”

• “I make Resolutions all the time! But everything conspires against me. Like I resolved to get fit but my colleagues brought all those great snacks back from vacation. I resolved to leave work early but my boss called meetings! Should I even bother any more?”

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of New Year Resolutions

😇 THE GOOD THING about making Resolutions is it’s one way of renewing our sense of Hope. And it can happen at any time of the year.

There’s no special magic in making resolutions on New Year itself. There’s no special curse that happens either if you end up breaking your resolutions within the first week.

What’s Good thing about making Resolutions is this:
you need the reminder that a new beginning
is always available for you - at any time of the year.

However, not all Resolutions work.

Compare these two versions of the same Resolution:

• Resolution version 1: I want to be Fit By 40. I already love walking and I already love fruit and vegetables. I can walk for 10 min daily. I can step on the scales each morning. I can eat fruit and vegetables for one meal per day.

• ‘Resolution version 2: I must lose 20kg by year end. I must start saving money to sign up for a private trainer in a gym. I am also going to push myself to workout 3-5 times a week and I will count my calories for every meal so that I eat less than 1500 calories a day.

Which version is designed to work for your Good?
Which version inspires hope for change in you?

A Good Resolution has to be designed to inspire hope and motivate follow-through rather than set you up for despair and failure.

To design a Good effective Resolution, you need to specify 3 things:

• a Good goal you want to work on (focusing on clear desired Good things vs. focusing on what are Bad things you’re avoiding or assumptions and expectations you believe you should want)

• a Good reason why you are already more than capable to make this happen (your current strengths and assets vs. your current liabilities or lack)

• a Good-enough system of habits that are small, attractive and easy to do repeatedly and consistently to get you closer to your goal (vs. a big, unattractive and complicated bunch of steps that are hard for you to remember, execute, monitor or change)

Resolution 1 may seem unimpressive and less ambitious than Resolution 2 but has a higher chance of succeeding. Committing to walk for 10 min daily is far easier to accomplish and the daily feeling of accomplishment is far more likely to result in more times where you choose to ride on that good feeling and go on to walk for more than 10 min.

Comparatively, it’s easier to fail and give up on Resolution 2. If the Resolution is not hot-wired from the start to make you feel Good about your capacity to make it happen over time, you’ll lose momentum. For change to happen, you need all the consistency and momentum you can get.

This approach to resolution design is grounded in psychologist Charles Snyder's Hope Theory.

Synder argues that hope is not mere optimism or feel-good wishful thinking about a faraway goal. Hope really springs forth from two cognitive processes: the ability to think through what you already have that can help you get there and the ability to also think up of different steps to get there.

Put very simply, his theory is

Creating Hope
= Goals + Agency + Pathways

Think of it as the secret equation of how we can practically overcome the G.A.P between future expectations and current reality.

• GOAL: get clear about a desirable thing you want to work on

• AGENCY: affirm you have existing assets, resources, strengths and skills that make you already good enough to make this happen

• PATHWAY: identify a system of small, attractive and easy-enough habits you can repeat that get you closer to your desired future. (You are also able to think of alternative systems if the original one fails.)

Learning to make effective, hopeful resolutions is an evergreen change leadership skill.

You can easily apply the same principles in your efforts to change things up not just for yourself but for your teams or organisation as well.

🤬 THE BAD THING is if your daily habit is Cynicism, it’s harder to find real resolve to change.

However, some of us might already reject any form of Resolution-making (New Year or otherwise) as pointless and doomed for failure.

“Yeah, riiiiight. It’s never going to happen.”

It’s important to affirm there’s nothing wrong about feeling cynical occasionally. It’s ok to let our inner grump grouse a bit about societal pressure and self-righteous people trumpeting on about Resolutions.

Cynicism is not good or bad because emotions are not good or bad. Our emotional reactions are like the top portion of the icebergs of our life. They alert us to simply be aware that there are deeper things stirring under the surface within our body, mind, heart and soul.

What you want to watch out for is if your cynicism starts becoming more like a permanent habit or a daily mood. That could be a sign of deeper problematic beliefs or experiences.

When I coach leaders struggling with cynicism against their resolve to change themselves or situations around them, I usually see 3 themes:

Creating Cynicism
= Ideals + Intelligence + Repeated Disappointments

Some of us did begin life with a lot of hope.

We chose to live according to our ideals. We set idealistic and clear wonderful goals that filled us with joy, excitement and determination.

We also had the intelligence to understand how to make those ideals work. We were clear we had the assets, resources, strengths and skills to make things happen.

And we did go out to make things happen.

But then things fell apart. People let us down. Promises were broken.

Behind many a hardened cynic is a deeply disappointed idealist.

Memories of past disappointments can still sting.

I can’t resolve to lose weight if I haven’t dealt with the shame that every year I try a new diet and exercise plan, I just end up gaining back weight. I can’t resolve to collaborate more if I haven’t dealt with the pain of disappointing professional betrayals. I can’t resolve to launch a new product if I haven’t dealt with my guilt over costly failed product launches from before.

Cynicism can be a form of self-protection: I will not hope again nor actively resolve to change things again because the disappointment is just too much. I don’t want to care anymore. I’ll just drift and “whatever” my way through stuff.

But too much cynicism can end up in self-injury.

😈 THE UGLY THING is when we discard our resolve to change things, we can slip into Ennui over the years.

I had a coaching client P that helped me see upfront the painfulness of staying in cynicism for too long.

Cynicism made P financially well-off but it also made him feel more jaded, bored and tired of his life in general. P missed the energy of his younger, hopeful self who had a lot more resolve to work on changing things for the better.

He had become way too skilled in using both his intelligence and repeated disappointments as ammunition to shoot down his own inner voice and the voices of others who were encouraging him to live out his ideals.

P described his years of sitting in cynicism as being in a prison of his own making. He knew the key was in his hands but he could not bring himself to unlock the door. The key was hope that change was possible and faith in his youthful ideals again.

P was experiencing ennui - a chronic listlessness and boredom that arises when you believe there’s nothing worth fighting for or working towards.

In ennui, Life is a slow and draggy drift towards nothing, nowhere and nobody particularly hopeful or meaningful.

It’s a deep inner fatigue of world weariness: “There’s nothing new or better under the sun for me.”

🌸 THE BEAUTIFUL THING is hope is not just an emotion, it is also a practice of change leadership.

The beautiful thing is every morning you get to wake up alive, the time for change is everpresent.

I’d like to believe that these morning mercies never come to an end
- they can be renewed every morning.

Every day is a good day to resolve to show ourselves mercy for our mistakes, our screw-ups, our let-downs, our could-be-betters, our failures SO THAT we can design a new change effort that works better for ourselves.

If you missed the chance or if you already failed at your grand list of New Year Resolutions as many of us will, have hope.

There can still be
a New Week Resolution,
a New Day Resolution,
a New Hour Resolution.

Hope exists when you practice just picking a time - any time -
to declare: “I am resolved to change things anew.”

Now is always a good time to make things New.

And you still have a Now.

I heard someone once share that he tries to think of his day in 4 quarters, inspired by the basketball games he enjoyed watching.

If he somehow failed to do what he resolved to do in the first half of the day, he resolved to never write off the day completely as a failed day. Instead, he challenged himself to think:

“How do I want to play my final quarter?”

He would resolve to make a new move, put on his game face and just play the next half of his day anew.

I like his analogy because it is a beautiful reminder that everyday we are playing an infinite game of life.

In an infinite game, there is no finish line and no trophy. The primary objective is to keep playing, with the best outcome possible being that you end your turn happy with your progress in it.

It’s ok to fail often or fail spectacularly at the resolutions we make.

It’s normal to discover the old way you designed resolutions don’t quite work for you.

That’s what makes us all change leaders and intervention designers - every professional is on a journey of trial and error, figuring out how to design better nudges that work in this complex system called Our Life.

The point is to keep learning and keep trying.

Whatever you do - stay in the game and don’t quit playing.

May you find playfulness, mercy and breakthrough this year
as you design and redesign your resolutions
to change things that aren’t working for you.

PRACTICE THIS

How can I design a resolution or a change effort that works for me?

Try writing your first draft resolution

• I WANT (one good thing)

• I ALREADY HAVE (one good asset)

• I CAN DO (one good-enough step: small, attractive, easy enough to repeat over time)

For example, these are some of my own resolutions this year:

• I WANT (to be more intentional in developing individuals in my team)

• I ALREADY HAVE (a good foundation of team level conversations)

• I CAN DO (20 min professional development conversations with each team member every 2 months)

Read the tips below and see if there’s anything you want to re-draft.

GOALS: What is one good thing I really want or need to see happen by the end of the year?

• Tip #1: You can go for 3-5 good things if you must. But if you’re starting out, just go for one. Don’t pick a number that is overwhelming.

• Tip #2: Go with what MUST happen vs. what “should” happen. Pick something that you will have major soul-deep regrets about if you didn’t start. Or pick something that would stir up major soul satisfaction if you managed to get even an inch closer to success.

• Tip #3: Up your fun factor. Try giving your goals larger-than-life titles that make you feel you’re embarking on something fun for you (“Get fitter and Lose weight” is such a downer. What if you’re a Swiftie who’d prefer “Train Like Taylor” to inspire you to work out as if you were doing an Eras tour of your own?). You can also consider making at least 1 of your goals a whimsical one. (e.g. “Eat The World” where you try new cultural cuisines every week; “Smile At Strangers” where you break out of your introversion by being friendlier to at least one stranger a week)

AGENCY: What is one good thing I already have inside me and around me that can help make this happen?

• Tip #1: Name your internal assets. Don’t look down on the small strengths you have. If you want to lose weight, your love for vegetables is useful. If you want to learn how to network, your weirdly specific knowledge of industry trivia and pop culture might come in handy.

• Tip #2: Name your external assets. Name 1-2 people around you that would get a kick out of helping you make things happen. Name whatever privileges you have that are ready and available to tap.

PATHWAY: What is one small, attractive, good-enough and easy-enough habit for you to do repeatedly to make the good thing happen?

• Tip #1: Look up James Clear’s Atomic Habits for more tips on habit design. A good resolution really is the same as designing good atomic habits. If you’re lazy to read, just remember it has to be small, attractive, good enough and easy enough for you to repeat. Don’t look down on a well-selected micro habit. For example, stepping on the scale everyday is a keystone habit that helps with weight loss. It’s small and easy enough for anyone to do - and it’s a good enough challenge for people who still struggle with their relationship to the number on the scale.

• Tip #2: Think of it as finding a repeatable rhythm that you can easily flow with your life as it is right now. Good resolutions are grounded in strategic small habits that you are able to do consistently daily or weekly. It accumulates. If you resolve to be more well-connected in your sector, what can you do daily or weekly that is attractive and easy-enough to you? Don’t resolve to meet 10 people a week if it sounds hard right now already. Resolve to message 1 person a day if that sounds easier and more fun for you to do - right now. If you regularly message 1 person a day, you would be more likely to end up meeting more people in a week.

Thanks for reading!
There are 3 more ways I can support you:

1. Get me to support your team/organisation’s change efforts: 

My team and I can work with you on people dynamics that are getting you stuck. I help my clients by strategising, training & coaching key personnel and facillitating neccessary conversations.

Email [email protected]
or fill in this form on our website.

2. ​Come for our public training courses in change leadership skills

I want to help you build a foundational set of skills you need to work on changes you are longing to see.

• Facilitating Conversations For Change

• Facilitating Conversations For Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

• Leading Effectively as Middle Managers

• Facilitating Psychological Safety For Team Health & Organisational Effectiveness

3. Keep reading and listening to what I am learning

• Subscribe to my Good, Bad, Ugly newsletter on LinkedIn, go here or email/web

• Listen to my podcast Finding Common Ground

Take care of yourselves & the ones you love,
I’ll see you next Friday,

Shiao