did you set a new year's resolution for
yourself how's that going
i don't know when in the year you're
watching but if i had to bet on the
status of your resolution
it's probably not flourishing but failed
or foregone
this is usually what the effort curve on
resolutions looks like
if new year's is new to you you are
forgiven for not knowing but
come on this isn't your first resolution
rodeo you've been here before
saddled up to a resolution gotten thrown
off in short order only to come back
next year to pick a buck of a different
color
or worse the same riding rolling
retreating returning
year after year after year of your
unchanging life
until a disappointed reaper calls time
new year's resolutions
suck human behavior change is really
hard and
the resolution rodeo this is not the way
instead to accomplish what you want out
of resolutions positive life change but
in a better way
allow me to suggest a gentler idea give
yourself
a theme instead of setting yourself up
to fail with
i'm going to lose x pounds by next year
or i'm going to read one book a week
at least a theme would be something like
year of reading or
year of health now that sounds a bit
broad that's the point for some things
precision matters
for others it doesn't and when trying to
build yourself into a better version of
yourself
exact data points don't matter all that
matters is the trend line
if the trend is going in the right
direction so are you just moving a trend
from negative to positive is
hard enough without defining falling
short of a goal
as failure heck even just decelerating
the negative is a positive
is there something you want more of in
your life something you want less of
well life is a branching path and it's
the trend of your decisions
some big but mostly small that will get
you to more or less
stuck in a queue what to do well if it's
the year of reading why not open the
book instead of
opening the anything else that's it you
were at a branch
and went one way instead of the other
having a theme is like
creating a friendly bot to follow you on
the path to help
notice branches and consider choices
with you reminding you to be
a little different in little moments
sometimes an example
one year my theme was novelty i felt
like things had become too samey rather
than resolve
i'm going to do n new things per t
time it was just year of novelty so when
it made sense
why not try the new instead of the known
it's the year of novelty
now i didn't go crazy but that time was
more novel than normal
mission accomplished a good theme can't
fail because
just having a theme bot along will point
out paths you wouldn't have noticed
otherwise which will start to change you
more on that in a moment in picking a
theme go with something that has a nice
broad name for the general direction you
want to navigate your life and it is
navigation the diverging paths of life
are hidden under the fog of the future
you can't plan the route and then fail
to follow it because there is no map
and unseen obstacles await at any moment
you
are where you are and can only navigate
from there perhaps you started a year of
health focused on weight loss or gains
before realizing there's a more
foundational problem you haven't failed
it's still year of health the broadness
of a theme
allows its meaning to change you started
out wanting to read more books but maybe
as you went on you realized academic
papers are where it's at or that
reading reading just doesn't work for
you and listening reading is the way to
go
you're still on theme the theme can
change because so will you
having a theme you will notice paths you
didn't before this gets you to
think about your thinking and thinking
about your thinking changes your
thinking which
changes who you are so a broad theme
allows its meaning to adapt with you
without the guilt of having failed to
meet the goals of a past you who
doesn't exist anymore i did year of
order for a while but what order meant
to me at the end was
different from the start and that's fine
so themes should be broad
directional but most importantly
resonant resonance is a physics
phenomenon where if you have a glass and
tuning forks of different sizes
bringing the right sized humming tuning
fork near the glass makes it hum the
same note
words are tuning forks for the brain
when picking a theme you're looking for
a word or words that
cause your brain to vibrate in resonance
i've been talking about themes for years
and getting people to try them here are
some of the words i've seen people use
the details of what they mean to anyone
don't matter what matters
is if there's something that strikes you
calls out to your brain
that is resonance so pick a broad
directional phrase that resonates with
you and run with it
your brain and the theme will make it
work now if this seems very hippy dippy
lovey dovey huggy wuggy fuzzy wuzzy
that's fine
not all tools need sharp edges i think
of it this way you should be trying to
build a life
you want to live and themes are a fuzzy
high level
longer term way to navigate your brain
at a broad
area of change smaller and specificer
are the systems in life you might want
to set up
below that are the targets those systems
might or might not generate and
at the most concrete and sharp is the
action or decision
current you is currently taking this
level of detail is perhaps a story for
another time but
creating a theme is the bigger and
broader to guide the smaller and shorter
lastly you may have noticed the examples
were all year of thing but that's mainly
because i've been trying to
gently introduce you to the idea
resolutions are a year
why not swap them for a theme instead
but if you're still here
a year is way long again fog of the
future
a season is a nice human length of time
in winter of learning you can learn a
lot but you do need to get started
because it's also not
so long as to feel forever nature's
clock
ticks on reminding you that flowers
bloom but briefly the summer sun
will wane leaves eventually drop snow
falls
and snow melts and flowers bloom but
briefly you can be
unchanging through all that but whenever
you are
if you've never had a theme give
yourself time to find one
that resonates with you and try it out
in the coming season
so
foreign