‘New year, do you’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2019 (2759 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gather ’round, kids, and let me tell you about the Great Read A Book A Week Failure of 2017.

In the waning days of 2016, I made a resolution to “read more.” I resolved to read a book a week.

Reader, I did not read a book a week. I read 19 books total — a completely respectable number and yet one that felt like a crushing failure because it wasn’t 52. Reading often felt like a chore that year.

I bristle against New Year’s resolutions, mostly because they tend to be fuzzily defined (what does “be better at money” mean? What does “eat better” mean?), externally motivated (especially ones concerning diets) and overly restrictive or punitive (again, diets). Ultimately, resolutions tend to make us feel bad about ourselves. Too often, we set ourselves up to fail by setting unrealistic and unattainable goals that don’t necessarily fit into our lives. Take the pithy marketing-friendly phrase, New Year, New You: not only is this completely overwhelming, but also mostly impossible. I mean, when it comes to unrealistic and unattainable goals, “become different person” should be somewhere near the top of the list.

Even though I defined my goal (“reading more” equals one book a week), reading a book a week was both unrealistic and unattainable — for me. In 2018, I just read whenever I felt like it because I like reading and guess what? I read more.

So, instead of New Year, New You, I propose New Year, Do You. Removing all “shoulds” and “musts” from the equation and ask yourself: what is important to you? What makes you tick? How do you want to live? What do you want to do this year? What are your priorities? What’s realistic and attainable for you?

By the way, it’s also perfectly OK to be OK with who you are, as you are, right now. If your resolution for 2019 is “keep killing it,” I doff my Happy New Year tiara to you.

I’m all for personal growth, change and self-improvement, but those pursuits have nothing to do with the flip of a calendar page or the mostly damaging rhetoric of resolutions. Most self-improvement work is messy, non-linear and unsexy. It’s ongoing and incremental, and involves overcoming obstacles and setbacks without getting derailed — that uncomfortable space where character and resilience are born.

Developing new habits or making big changes in your life takes time and can be challenging, but neither activity has to require a ton of willpower. What they do require, however, is desire. You have to want it. Look at it this way: you’re never going to do something you fundamentally don’t want to do, no matter how much willpower you possess. When you want to do something — when you’re excited, energized and have a clear idea about why you want to do the thing in the first place — you are more likely to actually do it, and do it consistently.

In other words, what’s your why? Being alive in the modern age seems to involve a lot of aimless striving. We put a lot of arbitrary pressure on ourselves to be stronger, faster, better, smarter, thinner, richer, with everyone’s social media highlight reels serving as an accelerant. If we’re not constantly striving, are we even living? Am I less of a person if I decide having defined triceps isn’t that important to me?

Last winter, I interviewed Erin Falconer, author of the book How To Get Sh*t Done: Why Women Need To Stop Doing Everything So They Can Achieve Anything, and there’s a passage I highlighted in her book that has stayed with me: “If we continue to pursue productivity for productivity’s sake, women will continue to position themselves diametrically opposed to satisfaction,” Falconer writes. “You may feel like the most productive person alive, but without a purpose, you’re just busy.”

Falconer’s central premise is that, by releasing yourself from tasks that don’t directly serve your goals (whatever those might be), you are able to achieve more. Releasing yourself from goals that no longer align with your life — or are unrealistic or unattainable — has the same effect. It frees up time, energy, and mental space to focus on the sustainable and attainable goals you care about.

It’s a new year. Do you.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti