NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION PARADOX 2017
I wrote about the New Year’s Resolution Paradox around this time last year. The paradox being that we all have goals we’d like to achieve, especially as the new year starts.
And we don’t achieve them.
Being more skillful in goal setting for 2017 could be helpful. I’m certainly not against goal setting.
Being single-mindedly goal focused though, you run the risk of single-mindedly focusing on the attainment of the goal and not on the actual actions that will enable you to achieve the goal.
I could suggest to you here that “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” and that would be the kind of cloying bullshit that shows up on cheap greeting cards and posters in your doctor’s office. Eagle soaring. Snowy mountain.
So let me try to just give it to you straight. It’s the tragic fuck-ups and unexpected miracles that happen along the way to the achievement of your goal where all the learnings are. Those mistakes and successes are you in the process of building a new CAPABILITY, and not just achieving a goal.
What you are also building is learning agility, which we can define as “having the capability to build a new capability.”
What is most crucial to learning agility is a willingness to give up ideas and perspectives and skills that served you well in the past, but are no longer relevant to your current commitments and obligations. The building of new capabilities is a constant picking up, putting down. What habits will you put down, in order to make space to pick up the new habits you wish to cultivate?
And that’s the thing about building a new capability. If you do something once, you can do it again. And by and large, the second time is going to be a hell of a lot easier than the first. Holes in one and royal flushes excepted.
Goal achievement can be a somewhat dubious proposition. Just like there is always another mole poking its head up in Whac a Mole in the arcade, there is always another goal. And endless litany of things to achieve, goal after goal after goal. Little stopping. Little smelling of roses.
Another way to say this is that very few people who put tremendous effort towards making 1 million dollars and actually made it, are happy with 1 million dollars.
And there are plenty of revered swamis in India wrapped in their only material possession, a blanket, who are blissfully happy ALL OF THE TIME.
So I have some ideas that you could try this year in lieu of setting more New Year’s Resolutions that you won’t keep. It’s only January 6th and you’re already starting to fade on your declared commitment to hit the gym 3 times a week, drink only green smoothies for breakfast, and not whatsapp ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends after 4 glasses of wine.
Perhaps you could start by reviewing the year past. Where did you spend your most vital resources? Your money. Your time. Your energy.
Time and energy do not necessarily correlate directly. Your grandmother’s critical illness may have been a pressing background concern that plagued you for the entire year and drained much energy. But you may not have spent any time researching a cure, or traveling 16 hours on a plane to visit her.
How did the expenditure of your most precious resources align with your intentions?
Did you wish to learn French, but instead spent a considerable sum not on a private French tutor, but on eating boeuf bourguignon at Tokyo’s finest French restaurants?
In 2016 when you thought to yourself “I really should be…” or “I wish I was…” what were you doing instead and why? Was it your commitment that was misplaced, or was it your competence in carrying it out? Do you wish to change that in 2017?
Marshall Goldsmith in his wonderful book on leadership What Got You Here Won’t Get You There tells a story of surveying elderly people near the end of their lives. The biggest regret of these folks was not “my dreams didn’t come true.” Their biggest regret was “I didn’t try to make my dreams come true.”
Please reread that several times and notice that the only difference between regret and happiness on one’s deathbed is the word “try.”
I don’t know how hearing this story will affect you. How it affected me was that I quit my job a month later, and started my own company. If “try” is the key to happiness when I’m 80, I can sure try.
I’d like to offer an alternative to goal setting in this new year.
Start by reflecting on one capability you would like to build in 2017. Consider why that is important to you. If you don’t have some really compelling reasons on the tip of your tongue, it isn’t important to you.
Once you’ve got that capability nailed down, contemplate how that capability would look expressed in your life. For example, many of my clients would like to be more influential within their organizations. More influential with their bosses, their teams, and across global borders.
What does that actually mean? I do not have an answer to that because the answer to that is your answer to that. The expression of this capability in your life is ultimately unique to you in your life. What are the observable behaviors that would indicate, in December 2017, that you have become more influential? Would your phone be ringing more often? Would the heads of other departments request more meetings with you to get your opinion and advice? Would projects you conceptualized be actually happening, products that you advocated for actually be built?
Once you’ve defined the capability and the observable behaviors around it, you now have a theme for the year. I urge you to reframe your goal as a theme. A unifying motif that informs everything you do. A recurring idea that pervades all the actions you take. An intentional center that integrates your life around a way that you are committed to becoming.
Most of us have a tendency to take on too much. If this approach to 2017 is something you’re willing to try, please choose just one theme. Not two, not three, not four, not more. Pick something big enough that it’s worth a no-holds-barred commitment.
Let me know how it goes. I’m over here cheering for you.