The Best Time to Start Your Resolutions

I'll throw my two cents into the obligatory deluge of "how to keep your New Year's Resolutions" posts that come out around this time of year.

You want to know the absolutely worst time to start a New Year's Resolution? The answer is January 1st. And here's why.

By starting a resolution on Jan. 1st, you are engaging in the very behavior that got you in the situation that needed a resolution in the first place. You are setting up a world in which the changes you want to see will happen at a certain time in the future, and will also be completed to your satisfaction at some point in the future.

If there's one thing you'll never hear me back down from, it's this; you will never be satisfied. Never ever ever.

By planning to start something at the beginning of the year, you buy into the illusion that at some point in time you will be a different, more motivated, more responsible person. But you won't be. Because you're just who you are, and who you are is determined not by your good intentions but by your present and continuing habitual actions.

I repeat this to my PCPers ad nauseam, and I'll say it here again. A human is just a bundled collection of energy. Not in a new age panpipes and crystals sense, but in a real sense of spinning electrons, firing neurons, and neurohormonic-based psychological habits. You think the choices you make are entirely up to you, but step back and you'll see that most of your life is operating on a wave shape. Everything from the foods you crave to the music you enjoy rides along a series of intricate patterns that you aren't even aware of most of the time. (I'll write more on this in the future, so stay tuned.)

So New Years rolls around and we think that we're just going to up and change the patterns we've established over years of habitual action.

I remember when I was a kid we would go on vacation to the Florida panhandle. Everyday I'd go out into the water about waist high and play one of the many games kids who grow up alone learn to play with themselves. It was me vs. the ocean. I'd plant my feet and would vow not to move from that spot. Waves would come and I'd duck them, elbow them, even dragon punch them, but I wouldn't move from that little square of sand.

As you can guess, the waves won. Either from exhaustion or the sheer force of water I'd always relent and let myself be carried away on the inimitable force of the ocean. Trying to change a habit by "becoming a new person on January 1st" is a similiarly difficult battle. Try as many times as you want, but you won't win a fight against your habitual patterns that way.

So what are we to do? When is the best time to start your New Years Resolutions? The answer is today. Let's say you've made the decision to start doing yoga every morning in the New Year. Well, you've probably got a free morning on December 28th. Why not do yoga that morning? Because that's still your "off time?" Give me a break. If that's how you're thinking now what hope do you have on January 15th?

The truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome the waves of your habitual thought/action patterns is by changing the frequency of those patterns. And that can only be done right now, this moment. Every second you let the pattern duplicate itself the harder it will be to break it up and overlay a new pattern. By changing now you stop putting off the change you want to make and start becoming it. This way when New Year's Day rolls around you'll already be in the midst of creating a new healthy habit and not staring up at a large intimidating mountain.

There's no doubt, this is incredibly hard. But if it's important enough to you, you will find the reserves of energy and motivation to get you through. And if it's not that important to you, then you won't stick to it, and that's ok too.

In the course of my work I often encounter people who say they want to "lose a few pounds," become "a little more flexible" or be "a little more relaxed" in their daily lives. I sometimes ask them why they want this change. The answers are usually half-baked platitudes about being more healthy or guilt-driven desires for self-improvement. And they always fail. The reason? They don't really want those things they say they do. AND THAT'S OK.

It's ok to not want to lose a few pounds. If you really wanted to lose a few pounds, you'd already have taken steps to do it, not just half-hearted steps like asking someone like me for some tips. It's good that you now know that that isn't a big priority for you. Get on with the things that are a priority.

As I've documented in other blogs I have a big dream of acchieving true side splits. I really want to do this, it's not just a thing I thought would be neat to do one day. It's a serious goal that I will attain. So you'll find me spending several hours a week on it. For most people it's a pretty stupid goal. That's fine. The people that really want to do stuff will take the necessary steps to do it. The people that kind of want to do stuff will fizzle out along the way.

And we're all achievers and fizzlers in our own areas. It's great to achieve. It's also great to fizzle, because you then know one more thing that you don't honestly care that much about. Finding what you truly love striving for is the point of this meaningless life!

Happy New Year.