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

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.