New Year's Resolutions - a new way of seeing

ew year, new me. We hear it every year, and sometimes we even believe it. That when 31st December clocks over to 1st January, we can make real changes in our lives. We can make ourselves anew, removing the things that drag us down and add things to improve us. The beginning of a new year, along with other milestones such as the start of a school year or semester, a birthday or a major life event such as getting married, a relationship breakdown or the birth of a child really do help us mark, in our minds at least, between the "old me" and the "new me".

So there's evidence to suggest that when making goals about lifestyle change, the start of a new year is as good a time as any to get stuck into it. But we also know from observation or from personal experience, that most New Year's resolutions fail. 

So how can the start of a new year be a good time to set goals but new year's resolutions fail so hard? I would argue that  the nature of resolutions themselves are set to set us up for failure, as well as the way in which many of us think about failure in itself.

Resolutions tend to be vague or focussed on the wrong thing. We either set vague resolutions, such as, "Be nicer to my partner", or we resolve to do something and become discouraged when we fail. When we think about failure not as an end point, but as a step along a journey, we can then reflect on what caused us to fail - what were the internal and external factors in ourselves, our family and our community that impacted on our success, and thinking about the way in which we can change those, or at least our behaviour to those things.

So firstly, I wanted to make sure my resolutions for this year were clear. Which meant throwing the idea of having resolutions in the bin. Instead of resolutions, this year I am having goals. My goals are clear, pass or fail states, but they are also aspirational - I don't expect to succeed at all of these goals all the time, but I do expect to continue to try to achieve them.

All of my goals for the year vary in size. There's little, low effort goals and daily tasks, but there's also big, exciting goals that need a lot of work to get there. That means that even if I don't have the time or space to achieve amazing things, I can achieve little things and get a mental reward for that.

My goals see me as a whole person. Rather than just focussing on my body, or my university studies, or my hobbies, I've tried to set achievable goals across the year that take me in the directions I want to go. I want to be able to manage my priorities so my university study doesn't kick everything else to the kerb as has happened in previous years.

My goals aren't all fun and exciting stuff. Sure, my three big hiking adventures are very exciting, but taking my meds is dull and important, and if I want to be able to go on adventures I need a house that's reasonably tidy to do it from. Doing the dishes isn't sexy by any stretch, but it is self-care.

My goals are taking me towards the person I want to be. They are following my career aspirations through volunteering for the Smith Family and continuing my social work studies, they are following my fitness aspirations through volunteering for my hiking group, as well as the boring self-care stuff.

And that, I think, should be the way we resolve to do anything - I need to assess if a goal takes me towards being the person I want to be.

So without any further ado, here are my goals.

Health and Body

No Alcohol during the week

Walk 2018km over the year

Mental Health

Meditate daily

Take meds everyday

Hiking

Three big hiking adventures - Walhalla, Wilsons Prom Lighthouse, Great Ocean Walk

Create 4 hiking Vlogs

House

Do dishes every night before bed

Ensure all the clean laundry is folded once a week

University

Maintain or increase WAM

Submit one assignment early

Work at implementing the growth mindset

Community

Lead one Hiking Group hike per month

Post one Hiking Group instagram pic per week

Start volunteering as a mentor for school kids with charity

Product Review - The Keen bracelet from HabitAware

I'm going to start a new series of reviews on products and services for trichotillomania.

If you don't know what trichotillomania is, I'm not going into detail  - it’s a condition where you have an uncontrollable urge to pull your hair out, strand by strand. I'll go into detail about my trich experiences in a future post, but for now I'm going to just review some of the items that have been useful for me.

OK, so what is the Keen? Its a bracelet that looks much like a fitness tracker, but what it does is recognise when you are pulling, and give you a little vibration to bring your unconscious pulling action into your conscious mind, so you can break the habit.

So how does it work? Basically you 'train' your band to recognise the movement that you're looking for (say pulling your hair on your crown, your eyebrows, or wherever) and then you get a small vibration when it picks up this movement. It is this vibration that aims to take the unconscious motion of pulling back into your conscious mind and stop the pulling. If you are caught in the motion, this allows you to bring your mindfulness to the hands pulling, and press a small button on the device, which records the amount of times you did the 'activity'. You can track your progress, using a bluetooth connection to a smartphone app.

I have been waiting for this for a long time - the media campaign launched in May 2016 with preorders opening then, and like lots of people I ordered mine - one for each wrist. I was hoping to have them by December, so I could have improve

d hair coverage for my wedding in February - unfortunately due to a variety of issues there were delays with the shipment until April this year.

Something that makes a big difference is that Keen was invented by Aneela Idnani Kumar, a trichster herself, and it really shows in the design and the website. There is genuine compassion and inside knowledge in the fabric of this product. This makes a real difference as while Keen isn't backed up by scientific research, there is certainly a precedent - Aneela herself has used a prototype to stop pulling her eyebrows, and models out her success in stopping pulling.

The device costs between USD $129 - $179 for one bracelet, but if you pull with both your hands you'll probably need two, so its not cheap, although there is nothing like it on the market. The Pavlok bracelet is the closest you'll come to it, but Pavlok doesn't identify your pulling motion in the moment, uses negative reinforcement rather than neutral reinforcement and costs around USD $179-$199.

When you open Keen you'll see the bracelet, the mini-USB charger and the studs used to hold the bracelet together - with the option of a L and R stud which is important if you have two bracelets like I do. The bracelet takes about two hours to charge - HabitAware recommend you charge it each night as there's just one day of charge in them, but this is easy enough to achieve.

The band itself is quite well designed - it is comfortable and looks like other body monitoring wristbands on the market as you can see next to my Fitbit Flex here. However, after being so used to the sturdiness of the Fitbit bands, I found the rubber holding the Keen a little flimsy - I wonder how well it would cope with a child playing in the mud at school. Also, it was quite itchy on my skin on a humid day - the sweat on my wrist combined with the multiple stud holes made it quite uncomfortable and I had to take it off.

Training the device is a bit fiddly - while actually training the device can be done in about sixty seconds, it took a while of trial and error to find the right motion that will pick up when you are pulling, but won't ping off with false positives every thirty seconds. I found myself having to create and delete trained motions a few times before I got something that was easy to cope with, as I was getting false positives every time I picked up my phone. Fortunately you can tweak the sensitivity of the device, so its not going off all the time.  

A screenshot of the app

The app is easy to navigate and simple to use. Its not something that you would feel ashamed in using in front of your friends, and if you want Keen for a child, you don't need to constantly back the bracelet up to the phone all day. I'm data driven, so I would prefer to have the option of exporting your history or being able to see your progress over the past, but its fine for a brand new product.

The actual vibration when you are pulling is the real key to the success of this product - it brings your attention to the pulling before you do it, and you can recognise it, think about where you are, what has triggered it, and then stop the action. It's great for bringing your conscious mind to your unconscious actions and teaching you to retrain your brain to do something else with that impulse.

Unfortunately, it wasn't picking up my hair pulling every time, but even when it didn't go off, I found just wearing the band to be a reminder, which was helpful. The false positives drove me a little bit nuts though, particularly when I was using my phone or typing at work.

Overall, though, it’s a great product. Considering this is the first iteration of the Keen, there has been a lot of thought and effort put into it by the team and it really did help me in recognising my pulling behaviours in the moment. I'd like to see if there's some suggestions they can bring towards sensory 'rewards' that we can use instead of hair pulling in the moment as well, but there's some great progress here.

I would give the Keen 8/10 - it is definitely the only product of its kind, and I'm hopeful that they will be able to further develop the product. Its a wonderful idea that's helping me already to be mindful of my pulling without making me feel ashamed. 

Pros:

• First bracelet of its kind
• For trichsters, by trichsters
• Gives feedback without judgement
• Helps to you bring your attention to your pulling behaviours and triggers
• App and bracelet do not look like they are for trichotillomania

Cons:

• Band can get itchy
• Training can take a little while to perfect
• False positives are annoying
• App history only stores 7 days of data
• Expensive (particularly if you need two).

Rolling with the punches

I'm getting ready to go back to university. It’s a big adjustment for me - I'm in my mid thirties, and have a successful career in a large corporation that pays well, that has excellent wages and conditions. I have what I craved throughout my twenties. I have an intellectually stimulating job that provides me with respect, and now I'm going to throw that all away… to go study for many years at a course that will eventually provide me with a career that will be poorly paid and poorly respected.

And it’s the best thing I ever did.

I'm a planner. Its what I do for a living. I plan things. However, the planning I do is often a coping mechanism to control my surroundings, to better cope with my anxiety. And right now, that's something that's increasingly being taken from me. I've rolled the dice and decided I'm going back to university in just over a month.

I just cashed in a week's annual leave at work to buy myself a new computer. There was a big sale on computers that ended yesterday. Normally, I’d fully check out all the options available, dither about it for several months before deciding on an option, well after I initially had the idea. But I don’t have time. I’m working to someone else’s deadlines here. Its terrifying to a certain extent, and from time to time I check in with myself and I’m either impressed with how I’m coping, or dreading the anxiety that hasn’t seemed to hit yet.

Right now, I’m looking at what needs to be done and just doing it. One thing at a time. I need a new computer, do what I need to do to get one. Check.

I need to tidy the study – do what I need to do to tidy up. *gulp* It’s a mess in there.

This is not to say that its all computers and good news. I had a big gaming tournament that was slated for early March. I had elected to take the Friday before the tournament off work, as there are events on the Friday through to the Sunday. I had built a (expensive for me) deck in the relevant format, one that I have never played before. I had made financial decisions for the past four months that would bring me to that tournament.

And it clashes with the only on-campus classes I have all semester.

I’m not going to say I wasn’t disappointed. It was a gutpunch. I’m still very sad about it – all the time and money preparing for the event just seems… wasted now. But I’m taking what I can from it – I’ve gained a lot of knowledge about a format of the game I really had no idea about before. I’m also discussing a possible trip to Sydney for a similar event in July.

So much going on, so many choices… I haven’t even gone into all the machinations to find out if my job will allow me to drop back to part time hours or not. There’s a lot going on – but I’m not over analysing everything and trying to control it – because there’s just so much I can’t even begin to control. Huh. No control, less anxiety. Let me think about that for a while.

Hard times and fridge ownership

Sometimes life is hard.

Sometimes people around you are doing it tough too, and they can't reach out and help you like you'd want it. 

Sometimes you're surrounded by generally shitty things happening - to you, to your family and friends. 

I'm in one of those spots right now, and sometimes its really hard not to get bogged down in all the suffering and sadness, the anxiety and depression. 

What the hell do you do in those times? Me, I remember that I'm a fridge owner. 

Yep. I own a refrigerator. 87% of the worlds population don't.

Not only that, when my last fridge conked out, I was able to scrape together some savings and buy a new one within two days. How lucky am I!

I practice gratitude for my fridge. For the frozen beans, ice cream, vegetables and eggs that stay cold and fresh. For the food that I am able to afford, the house that keeps me warm and dry in winter, cool and out of the heat in summer.

When things go bad, its so easy to focus on this one thing, the thing that is out of order. We cling to the idea of security. that we will always have material comforts. When things go awry, when arguments become toxic, when health fails and hearts break, we are kicked out of our secure delusion. 

And in those times, rather than tell myself that everything is OK, I am finding it helpful to be grateful for all the many good things that happen to me every day.

How wearing a fitness tracker made my house tidier and improved my relationship

My partner was quite surprised when I asked for a fitness tracker for my birthday. For those who aren't in the know, a fitness tracker is a super awesome pedometer which (for me) does things like track my sleep as well as how many steps I've done.

After a few days of me counting steps, and him reading about other friends who have found wearing a tracker being really helpful for them to be aware of how much physical activity they're doing. Or not. So a few weeks later, when he saw a special on them he jumped on it.

Then it was on like Donkey Kong. The program that we use allowed us to set little challenges "who can do the most steps over the weekend" "Who can do the most steps over the working week?". Suddenly we had gone from a boring and virtuous system where we tried to better ourselves to a cheeky and exciting battle for stepping glory. There was trash talking, cheering for each other and lots of fun.

Because he works nights and I work days, we often don't spend much time in the same room over the week, so having a little chat room in our fitness tracker app which allowed us to trash talk each other as I walked to the train station on my morning commute, or cheer as he made the most of his morning to get another thousand steps. We felt like we were closer together, even though we were in different places.

I stopped walking to the nearest train station, and started walking to one a little further away. I would bring my lunch to work and then spend ten minutes of my lunchbreak walking around the block.

He decided he needed to step it up a notch too and soon we were walking places we would normally have driven – to the café for brunch, to the supermarket for a loaf of bread… We were becoming unstoppable.

However, it was the housework that is really a surprise. My partner and I are both, well, kinda slobs. Housework is not a priority for us, although we certainly do enjoy living in a tidy house, often we find the motivation to keep it that way just… difficult. But right now, the dishes are done, the clothes are folded and in the cupboard and the coffee table is no longer the snowdrift of opened and unactioned correspondence that it always seems to be.

The reason for this is... well, housework accrues steps. In order to earn extra steps, housework has become something of a game too. Let me explain. We’ve been able to ascertain that cooking food accrues a decent amount of steps (around 500 per meal). Now if my partner’s cooking, that means I need to catch up with 500 additional steps. So I’d go into the lounge room and tidy all the bits and pieces off the coffee table. Or spot the unfolded pile of clean laundry in the basket and fold it and put it away. My partner, of course, would spot this, and say that I was ‘stealing steps’ which meant that he would have to do additional steps, by doing other small chores around the house.

The air of cheeky competition in the air is palpable. But the part that has improved our relationship the best was how… appreciated we are both feeling right now.

When you come home from work, and the house is tidier than when you left it, I feel grateful for it.

When I jump up and do the dishes after dinner, instead of leaving them for my partner to do the next morning, he feels cherished and relieved. He does other work instead – folding laundry or tidying the lounge room.

Its amazing how one small positive change can have unexpected flow on effects.  

Introductions and that pesky second arrow

I'll just admit this, right now. This is not a blog about someone coming and imparting their wisdom. This is me, talking about the ways in which I learn, fuck up and learn some more.

I recently experienced some difficult times. I am an anxious person at the best of times. I couldn't sleep. I pull my hair out. I was anxious about my performance at work, and there was too much work to possibly complete on my own. Something had to give.

So I did something odd. Something that good old rationalist me fought as I did it. I started attending meditation sessions at Melbourne Insight Meditation and listening to the basic Mindfulness Meditation course by Gil Fronsdal of the Insight Mediation Centre in the US.

And I have learnt so much about myself over the past few months that I wanted to document my experience and share with the world some of the things I've learned. Not because I know it all, but because I don't.

So why was I just so stressed out? Mainly because I was hung up on how things should be, rathern than how they were. I was stressed because I was doing very long days at work, because I was, in effect, covering two peoples worth of work, but there was only one of me. However, this in and of itself wasn't the problem.

The problem was that I kept beating myself up over the poor quality of my work. Over the fact that things were consistently not being done on time. While everyone in my workplace understood that I was under the pump, I was beating myself up because I was holding myself to an impossible standard. I felt that I should be able to do better.

When I heard Gil Fronsdal talk about the Sutta of the Arrow, something just clicked in my head. The Sutta basically outlines the way in which we make things difficult for ourselves by fighting things that can't be fought. We have bad things happen to us, which is like being shot with an arrow. It hurts and is difficult. However, when we stress out about unfortunate things, or get angry, its like we are getting shot with a second arrow. While we might not be able to avoid the original misfortune, we all have the power to influence the way we react to misfortune.

In reality, I simply couldn't do better at work. I won an award for my performance through that period. However, I felt that I wasn't good enough.

Armed with the understanding that I was only stressing myself out more, I realised that I didn't have to remain helpless in my situation. I had the power to change the way I thought about the stress and overwork I was feeling. I had the power to forgive myself.

And its not a quick fix. It takes practice. I continue to be harsh upon myself. And from time to time, I remind myself that either I am doing enough, or I am not doing enough. If I'm doing enough, I need to give myself a break. If I'm not doing enough, well, I just need to do more.