If you have written a list of resolutions, I want you to check a few things. If you haven’t written them, it’s good to write out EVERYTHING you want to achieve, then edit them with the checklist below.
Are they relevant?
Good things take time. What you want in 10 years, 20 years’ time will need your effort today. So you might have some short-term goals like reading 120 books a year, but you must question if these resolutions do anything to your ultimate dream life.
Go back to
my first newsletter, we have established that almost
all your resolutions should be about how to increase time to do things that will lead you to your dream life, and reduce time doing things that don’t.
If they don’t actually fit the above, then they shouldn’t be on the list because they will take away your energy to make your dream come true.
So remove the ones that are just noise.
Are they immediate?
It’s important to note that you should already be doing things you want to do NOW. It’s a bad excuse to say other things need to change first before you could do something.
If you want to get married, you should be finding a date now. If you want to become a full-time writer, you should be writing now. If you want to become a millionaire, you should be making money now. Never later.
Even if there is a situation that stops you from fully engaged in your passion (like my corporate job took away my time to write full time), you should still use as much of your spare time to do them as possible. This is what true passion is about, it’s something that we can’t help but to do it anyway, no matter how many obstacles there are.
So please stop dreaming and start doing. If you are unhappy with your current situation but don’t know what you actually want to do, your resolution should say: I will use my spare time to search for it now. In practice, this might mean you will leave your comfort zone and try many different things in the coming year.
Remember, it takes an average of 10,000 hours to become good at something, stop delaying it.
Are they practical?
In order for me to become a full-time writer, I needed more time to write and quitting my job is not a practical option. So my resolution four years ago was to change to a job that had more regular hours and devote time outside of work to write.
You might’ve heard of the SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and anchored within a Time Frame. Edit goals that aren’t providing a practical action and solution to your dream.
I have a friend who wants a long-term boyfriend but he is on Grindr for a casual sex partner all the time. He says he is looking but he has needs now, so he spends time swiping on the sex app. This is contradictory, by setting a practical resolution, he gained clarity and devoted his time matching, chatting, meeting and dating men that were also looking for a long-term relationship. He’s now happily married.
Nourishing 30-day January challenge
It’s tempting to start doing resolutions straight away because we are keen to achieve, right? But the contradiction is that impulsivity doesn’t sustain.
If the goals are for the long game, it’s better to think very carefully about them and be in line with ourselves holistically. That’s why I have been writing a newsletter about knowing ourselves (or self-discovery).
What I tend to do with January is to really think about the goals while doing an easy to achieve 30-day challenge. I have been doing Yoga with Adrienne’s 30-day Yoga challenge for six years now. It gives me space to think about my life plan (as yoga and meditation often do), completing the challenge makes me feel good and successful, and creates a stepping stone into the longer-term goals.
