Resolution Reset: The Year of Fabulousness
It’s the word of the month: no New Year would be complete without a host of ambitious resolutions that will have us living The Perfect Life by mid-March…at least in our imagination. Only, we rarely make it that far. So then why do we insist on engaging in this ritual every year? What is it about January 1 that stirs a desire to re-write our lives?
The Resolution Dissolution
I’m all too acquainted with the shiny newness of resolutions. After all, you’re talking about the person who brought a full-fledged Life Plan to her first session with a professional leadership coach.
Resolutions are rich with promise — the endless possibility, the potential for fulfillment, the atonement of past mistakes. (Perhaps that’s part of the reason why I make resolutions year-round.) But we all know the hard part is keeping them alive after the novelty wears off.
Come to think of it, resolutions are a bit like a workout video: the first couple of times through a new routine are fun; full of unexpected twists and turns. Then, before you know it, you’re lip syncing the instructor’s once-quirky comments (which no longer seem so amusing after hearing them 117 times) and cutting short the cool-down: that is, if you’ve even made it past the first set of push-ups.
I sit firmly in the camp of those people who get carried away with the visioning stage of resolution-making: that moment at the outset of the process when my imagination tempts me with the promise of cellulite-free thighs and a flawless home straight out of Architectural Digest. What I’ve learned from experience is that in spite of the initial allure, all too often the destination is an illusion.
A New Approach to Lasting Change
With this in mind, as January comes to a close and the first signs of resolution weariness set in, I decided to redefine my expectations and take a more realistic approach to transformation this year.
This doesn’t mean scaling back on long-term goals: I’m still dreaming the big dream. The difference is that I seek to consciously savour every step along the way, even when the going gets tough.
To do this, I needed to get real about the everyday heavy lifting required to achieve my big ambitions. After all, “those abs don’t come for free, people” (as Jillian Michaels so lovingly reminds me while in the throes of one of her kick-butt workouts). We all know that lasting impact is the result of big thinking together with the discipline to “do the doing” a little bit every day.
This is why it’s so important to choose goals that are truly meaningful — and not only focused on that fleeting moment of glory when you reach the pinnacle. In my case this required having an honest moment about whether the end goals I had in mind for 2016 might not be better in my imagination than reality.
Reframing Resolutions
This weekend I spent some time revisiting my big goals for 2016 and reflecting on the relative priority of each one versus the time I will have available. Total house renovation while working full-time and undertaking an Executive Master degree? Unlikely. But upgrades to our living room and my home office? Feasible. Five one-hour workouts a week while juggling a heavy travel schedule and long daily commutes? That might be ambitious. But a daily walk around the block after dinner and three full workouts a week? Done.
With this revised resolution plan in hand, I still had one big question to tackle: how to stay motivated to put in the hard work, day after day? Particularly on those days when the end goal is a distant dream and all I want to do is come home and plunk myself down on the sofa for three hours of Netflix with a frozen pizza and glass of wine (or two…or three…).
The Year of Fabulousness
Part of the answer to this resolution puzzle actually came a couple of weeks ago over dinner with my colleague, Kathy, an accomplished professional and mother of two boys. Like many successful women, one of Kathy’s challenges is to find time for herself amid the competing priorities of family, work and life.
Over our heaping plates of Chinese takeaway, Kathy shared her idea for what she calls the Year of Fabulousness. In a nutshell, it’s about making time for the things that inspire her to feel her best, from the inside out.
I realized this was the secret sauce missing from my 2016 resolution mix: an inspiring theme to connect my goals to a higher purpose, which not only inspires but actually reframes the journey itself into the destination. With February starting tomorrow, I am ready to reboot my resolutions with a simplified plan to live a Year of Fabulousness. Now there’s a resolution worth keeping!
(Feature photo: Death to Stock)
