January’s End: A Gentle Reminder for Goal Setters
For those in a moment (Season? Era?) of “head down, do work, grit teeth, repeat” and unable to mark the passage of time, I have a gentle notification coming from a place of absolute love: the month of January is over. Holiday gifts have transitioned from presents to belongings, wrapping paper and ribbons are back in the storage closet, and Christmas decorations are back in the garage. Even with those milestones, I’m slightly surprised that the four weeks of January are now in the past.
Did you make resolutions? Throw down any “This is the year I finally….” gauntlets? Did you make a “to-be” list? (If that question has you a little confused, click here: https://www.burningbrightmd.com/blog/from-to-do-lists-to-to-be-lists-a-new-approach-to-goal-setting-for-2024) If you did, I invite you to take a look at the last four weeks with gentle curiosity. Get objective, not self-deprecating. Pump the breaks on the self-criticism reflex. Direct your inner mean girl to just hush up for a minute and look at where you’ve gotten since January 1st. The first thing I said I would become in 2024 is physically strong while improving my cardiovascular fitness to the point that I have no issue with three flights of stairs. I can tell you that I am stronger than I was four weeks ago: I’m working with a trainer twice a week, and I’m squarely in the “make fast gains” part of the process.
Stairs though? Yeah, no. I am not taking the stairs any more than I was on December 31st. I can be efficient about the whole thing when I look at it with curiosity. It makes sense that I haven’t been deliberate about climbing stairs: the huffing and puffing I’m doing after three flights is physically uncomfortable, mentally unnerving, and emotionally embarrassing if somebody else is at the top of the stairs when I get there. At this point, my inner mean girl is fidgeting because she has all sorts of things to say about my lack of progress on this goal. “Nope,” I can think to her, “not yet. Just give me another minute.” Now, I can ask myself, “Do I still want to achieve this goal?” Maybe the answer really is no. And while we’ve got the self-criticism muted, please hear me say that it is okay to give up on something you don’t particularly want to do. Feel you need some sort of permission? Well then, here it is: I give you permission to stop working towards a goal that is no longer important to you.
By this point in the process, my inner mean girl has given up because I’ve not given her airspace. That’s awesome because it gives me the brain space to plan my next steps if, after consideration, it turns out that my goal is still important to me. I will tell you, very begrudgingly, that climbing stairs is important to me: it’s a marker of cardiovascular health, and I spend an annoying amount of time waiting for elevators. Because I’m working from a place of curiosity, I can consider what it would be like to break the goal down into something smaller (more easily achievable) and objectively measurable (so I get a reliable dopamine hit from doing it). For my stair climbing goal, I can adjust it to: “I will use the stairs to get to my office every morning that I come into work at the hospital in February.” There’s a spot in my planner where I can write whether I took the stairs as planned. My clinical schedule won’t get me climbing three flights of stairs daily, but it will undoubtedly be more often than I’ve done since New Year’s Day. I can hold myself to a standard of progress, not perfection. And then, on March 1st, when I look back at February, I can assess whether I followed through on what I said I’d do. And then, with curiosity, the whole process can start all over again.
Because here’s the reality: New Year’s Day doesn’t have any magic regarding goal achievement. Neither do Mondays. Neither do birthdays. Neither do the firsts of any months, for that matter. It’s all arbitrary. We hold ourselves back when we 1) only accept perfection on our way to achieving our goals and 2) delay working towards our goals because we “want to wait until it’s the new year/the first of the week/the gibbous phase of the moon,” whatever. Have you set a New Year’s Day goal and still want to keep it? Make today your day to make progress. If the starting line is arbitrary anyway, make it arbitrary in a way that serves you. Yesterday, you weren’t working towards that goal, but today, you are. Before you read this post, you weren’t working towards that goal, but now, after reading it, you are. Instant starting line.
So lovely friend, how’d your January go?