Fay Ferris

As the wheel of the year turns again and we have a New Year to look forward to, many people formulate New Year’s Resolutions. In this blog, I hope to provide a few ideas for actually making changes based on your New Year’s Resolutions and Goals.

In 2015, I accomplished more than most years, and I know the reason. As usual I wrote out my goals and resolutions. I had learned that just the act of writing out goals and resolutions makes them more likely to be accomplished. I set them up according to categories such as Health, Relationships, Recreation, Career, Financial, Home, etc. But often, year after year, the same un-accomplished goals went on the list. I decided I really needed to think smarter and do something different. A friend of mine was coincidentally feeling the same frustration and had been researching New Year Resolution websites. Luckily (I believe), we couldn’t make a website work for us, so, instead, we decided to have a 20 minute phone call Monday mornings (10 minutes each) to discuss our goals for the coming week, and our accomplishments (or lack of thereof) during the past week. We called it the Goal Buddy call.

Well, this was a learning process. At first it was exciting to see myself finally and actually doing the things that had been itemized on my lists for years! Reporting to someone each week was extremely motivating to get many of the items on my goals list completed and to develop routines to meet my resolutions. I noticed that I needed to set time aside to do some of the items on the list. Sometimes I actually took time off work to complete the actionable items. I soon learned that writing down the goal, scheduling the time to complete the goal, and reporting the completed goal to someone, made a big difference in accomplishment and in self-confidence in attempting other goals.

Months later, however, it was galling to see some particular items on the goals list were, well, still on the goals list. My goal buddy and I would problem-solve these difficult items briefly in our calls. For example, my friend wanted to try daily meditation since she had heard of its many benefits. So she tried to meditate for 30 minutes each day. After several weeks of not meeting her 30 minute goal, I suggested she shorten the period to 15 minutes (making it easier). Same result – not happening. Then she tried 5 minutes, and finally 2 minutes. She admitted that she just could not sit still and meditate. Instead, she decided to try something different but with the same benefits. She renamed her goal “quieting herself” by reading or a similar quiet activity. This met with much better success, but it was still a struggle. Finally, she decided to quiet herself as she mindfully tidied up her place – and she was able to do so for 30 minutes/day. Months had passed before this mindful tidying became a habit. Without the accountability, problem solving, and weekly reaffirmation of the goal that the Goal Buddy process provided, I highly doubt she would have achieved the goal this year.

Most of us have started new habits, projects, and New Year’s Resolutions with great enthusiasm and hope, only to have them languish, sputter and drop out of our life. The Goal Buddy approach was helpful because it meant that I was obliged to explain why I didn’t do something, and also if I decided it wasn’t going on the goals list again, then why not. If the item was back on the list for the coming week, then what could I do differently in order to accomplish the goal? I know that repeatedly unaccomplished simple goals prompted me to develop the Power Hour. This was time set aside, which was Monday mornings after the Goal Buddy call, during which I would tackle these “nagging tasks”. Suddenly after the invention of Power Hour, goals from years ago started getting done. The moral of the story: you need to set aside time to accomplish things.

I also read Gretchen Rubin’s book “Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives” which helped me to realize that different kinds of people react differently to setting goals and resolutions. (So some of you may be completely uninterested in setting goals, having a goal buddy, etc). She also had fun terms for things and conceptualized the difference between Goals and Resolutions which I found useful in terms of improving self-confidence. But first, the difference between the two ideas: Goals have a finish point, whereas Resolutions, are things you desire as an everyday habit. With a Resolution, you cannot imagine saying “well, that’s done, I can take that off my goals list.” For example: exercise daily, eat well, keep a clean home, connect with people, etc. A goal, is something that has an end point, such as run a marathon, paint the bedroom, sell my car, etc. Resolutions are things that you will always want to do (or have to do) and end up on your goals list, week after week.

Self-confidence is increased by understanding the difference and not beating yourself up about not following a resolution every day. With resolutions what is important is moving in the right direction, not perfection. If you don’t follow the resolution one day, you can just get back to the resolution activities or “competing response” (see next paragraph for explanation) as soon as you can. For example, over the holidays, I did not do certain stretching exercises every day. But as soon as I was able, I returned to the stretching exercises. I didn’t beat myself up for that, I just re-commit and return to the action. Problem solve if it is a struggle. Ask yourself: “What is the barrier, and what could help overcome the barrier?” Simple things like not having the right tool (or having the tool handy) can delay the completion of goals for years, or give a spotty performance to a resolution. On the other hand, buying all the tools and not having the time to do the activity will also result in disappointment. You need to prioritize and set aside the time!

Sometimes, people want to live cleaner and healthier but have addictions or bad habits. It is usually easier to add a positive goal (what you want) than to achieve a negative goal (what you don’t want). For example, it is easier to add more vegetables to your plate than it is to not eat sweets. It is easier to plan to drink sodas at a party than to try to not drink any alcohol. The vegetables and the soda drinks are in these cases the “competing responses” to eating sweets and drinking alcohol. It is important, if you want to stop a “bad habit”, to first build up and resource your competing responses. After you have a sense that your competing response is do-able, then subtract the bad habit from your life. For example, if you wanted to “eat healthy”, then start by adding more vegetables (4 cups of vegetables/day and you’ll live longer) and after several weeks of being successful, you can cut out one unhealthy food. Continue to cut out the unhealthy food, and add the healthy. (I’ll leave it to you to decide what is healthy or unhealthy). If you want to quit smoking, you can go to your Doctor or Quitnow.ca and get nicotine replacements (without the 800 toxic chemicals in cigarettes), patches, etc. When you have all the supports in place, then you can quit (either cold turkey, or by cutting back to nothing). Without a plan and a competing response, eliminating bad habits will be a struggle. See my blog on addictions for more information.

So, in summary, I suggest that if this year you want to achieve some goals, and actually live better every day, then you could: 1) take the time to write down your long term goals and resolutions; 2) find a goal buddy and review your goals and resolutions weekly; 3) problem solve, be flexible, re-define your goals and resolutions until they work for you; 4) make time for your goals and resolutions, (the same time every week, or day, works best for most (but not all) people); 5) keep moving forward on your goals and resolutions without judgement, just re-commit and act if you don’t complete a goal or fail to do a resolution one day; and7) add positive goals and competing responses first, then subtract negative goals after.

By Fay Ferris, Registered Clinical Counsellor