January 17th.
Apparently today is the day that most of us will give up on our New Year’s resolutions. I found a few other sources which suggested it might even be earlier but pretty much everyone agreed that two and a half weeks was about the best we can hope for.
Two and a half weeks. Seventeen measly days.
Seriously? That’s the best we can do?
We spend the majority of the Christmas holidays taking stock of the year and thinking carefully about the things we want more or less of in the future. More money, less struggle, more water, less food, more love, less conflict.
If you’re like me, you fill in endless planners and goal setting worksheets and search for your word of the year. We think about the way we’d like our lives to be. We dream about how it would feel to be more organised, or more hydrated, or more fulfilled in our jobs.
And seventeen days later we decide it’s all too much of a hassle. Not worth the effort involved.
Not worth the effort?
To get the things we want?
I don’t think that’s it.
Most of us would kill to make some positive changes in our lives. Ok, not some. Shitloads. And therein lies the problem.
I believe we give up because we take on too much, too quickly. We try to change too much. Word of the year, New Year’s resolutions, 2015 goals. Goals for business, goals for health, goals for family. Write them all down on a piece of paper and then try to crowbar them all into the 168 hours we have each week. Schedule it in. Forgot about time for sleeping, or eating or peeing? Back to the drawing board then.
By the time January 1st comes around I’m pretty much over it. Endless repeats of “I’ll start it tomorrow” quickly follow and I realise that only the truly hardcore even make it to January 17th.
For as long as I can remember I have been making big huge sweeping life changes, hoping upon hope that the momentum will pick me up and carry me away before my energy runs out. Run faster, work harder, get it out of the way, eat the frog. This has been my mantra.
But it turns out that our energy and our willpower only lasts a paltry seventeen days. That’s just not enough time for any real momentum at all – a lesson I have been forced to learn over and over again.
If somehow I took away all of the pushing and striving, and I could only have a wish instead of a goal, what would I really want? What is it that I need to feel happy and fulfilled? I think I can boil it down to just one thing.
Growth.
So perhaps my year should begin with a question instead. How do I want to grow this year?
I’ve thought about this a lot over the past few weeks and my answer is this. I want to grow in compassion for myself this year.
Easier than drinking kale smoothies for the next 365 days? Yeah, not so much.
But just how much time is wasted in fear and worry about past mistakes, in punishing ourselves for our failures and our detours? How much time is wasted in telling ourselves that we don’t deserve the things that we want – that they are greedy or selfish or shameful? When are we going to give ourselves a break if we don’t want the things other people think we should?
And how many of our New Year’s resolutions are really punishments in another form? I’m ashamed that I didn’t do better last year so I will flog the guts out of myself in January just to show everyone that I’m really trying.
Not this year. Not for me. This year I want to grow in compassion for myself. I want to accept help without shame. I want to ask for what I need, knowing that even though the answer may be no, I still deserve to ask. I want to invest in my development, my training, my health, my joy. I want to forgive, because not to do so is simply a way of punishing myself for past mistakes.
This is starting to look like a long list again isn’t it? A list of everything. All the changes. All at once.
But of course it’s not all at once. It’s not even a thing to do. It’s not an item that can be checked off a list or scheduled into a diary. It’s not about filling, it’s about emptying. It’s a way to create some mental space for something other than drama. A way to grow.