New Year’s resolutions for you (and only you)

Posted on 15 January, 2020

It’s that time of year again.

That part when the working-week is making a comeback into your life and all the resolutions you made after four glasses of champagne on New Year’s Eve are already at breaking point.

Don’t fret, we’re about to fix that last one.

At this time of year, it’s quite common to reflect on whether or not our expectations of the past 12 months met the reality of the year gone by.

If you identified a gap, your mind starts to conjure up ways of fixing this discrepancy in the new year—enter ‘resolutions’.

Typically we tend to favour New Year’s resolutions that are socially desirable:

“I’m going to run 5km every single day, without fail, oh and stop every last drop of alcohol consumption in my life, and while I’m at it I’ll cancel my Netflix subscription and ditch carbs from my diet completely”

Now, ignoring the fact that some of these may not be the best decisions from a health standpoint when you make resolutions that are based on social conformity you’re also often setting yourself up for failure. Why? Because they have nothing to do with you.

Any kind of behavioural change is difficult at the best of times. The only real way to increase the odds of success is if the goal you make is in line with your core values.

What are ‘core values’? They’re an expression of ourselves—a description of how we want to live our lives and who we want to be.

We all have the freedom to create a new identity any time we want. But very few of us take the time to think about who we actually want to be.

The desire to ‘achieve one’s full potential’ is the ultimate human need according to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory.

Our most basic needs sit at the bottom of the hierarchy, such as food, water and safety, while the middle layers are made up of elements of connection, such as finding a sense of accomplishment in our professional lives, and a sense of belonging in our personal lives.

But what sits at the very top is the self-actualisation—the process of defining the self. The latter is what we’re going to work on now.

The process of discovering a clear sense of self—who you are and what you want from life, is achieved through alignment with your core values.

It’s not rocket science—when you accept what is most important to you, you begin to move towards a much happier version of yourself (and you may even tick off some resolutions along the way).

So what’s your first move?

Start by writing down your values

These are words you’d like to define you. Think big, for example, things like integrity, connection, acceptance, only don’t just use those ones, we’ve made this convenient list to help you choose.

Oh, and try to avoid emulating someone else’s personality or following trends. For this to work, your values must be yours and only yours, so you have my full permission to not care what anyone else may think of them.

Once you’ve made your list of values, it’s now time to prioritise

Let’s circle your top three values. Be ruthless. The less values you have the clearer your sense of identity and the easier it is to relate back to them when making big decisions in the future.

Now we want some reinforcement

Write down your top three values somewhere that’s visible to you so you can access them anytime, anywhere.

Perhaps it’s as a text-based screensaver or lock-screen on your phone, or maybe you go lo-fi and crack open the post-it-notes on your computer monitor or bathroom mirror. The choice is up to you.

Finally, we want to create some change so you begin to live more in line with these values

This is what we’re going to do: each day pick one of your values (eg, connection) and focus on doing one action in your day that moves you closer to being a connected person (e.g., I am going to be present during dinner this evening and focus on what my partner and child are saying to me).

Actions you could take to help facilitate this might be as simple as making sure the TV is off or your phone is on do-not-disturb while you’re eating that linguini. Because remember—you can eat carbs now.