Birthdays, Self-Reflection, and a Better Year Ahead
I recently had a birthday. Every bit I've gotten older, birthdays have get for me a time of intense self-reflection: where am I in my life, where do I want to be, what could I meliorate? They don;t depress me, like they do then many others, but they do brand me call back.
Birthdays are also natural times for me to make new resolutions. New Years Mean solar day has never felt like much more than an accident of the calendar, just birthdays – particularly with mine falling right at the start of the academic calendar that has dominated nearly of my life, when I really am making a new showtime in much of my life with the dawn of a new academic school year – seem like a natural fourth dimension to showtime making choices well-nigh the twelvemonth ahead.
Now, I said "resolutions", and nosotros all know resolutions fail. My swain Lifehack writers have written well-nigh the failure of resolutions over and over once more, as for example in Steve Errey'southward mail service entitled pretty unambiguously New Years Resolutions Don't Work – Here'south Why. But I think we need to reframe the idea of resolutions, to call up almost them not so much as goal-setting but as problem-solving.
When we call up about resolutions, we tend to call back of them as a matter of resolve, that is, of willpower. "I resolve to do x, y, and z." Of form, if we had the willpower to piece of work on our novel, laissez passer on rich desserts, or be more approachable at social events, we wouldn't need to resolve those things in the start identify. And and then yes, they fail – and often go out u.s.a. biting and disappointed with ourselves.
But what if we thought nigh resolutions non so much equally a affair of resolve but of solutions – that is, as a re-solution to life's issues? My begetter, a great collector of quotes, likes to repeat Einstein'due south dictum that "Insanity is doing the aforementioned thing over and over and expecting different results"; information technology seems to me that most of life's problems remain with us because the solutions we've adopted don't really solve them – and so nosotros try the same solutions, over and over, harder and harder, thinking somewhen those problems must requite ground.
Consider, for example, this situation which many of us are or accept been in:
- Problem: Your aren't advancing in your chosen career.
- Resolution: Work harder, put in longer hours, apply for higher positions more oftentimes.
- Re-solution: Are you still committed to this career? Maybe yous don't accept the passion and drive y'all had when you entered it ten years ago. If money weren't an event, would you withal want to do what you do? What would y'all do? Inventory your skillset and your passions today and start looking into changing careers.
Mayhap that isn't how you'd accost the problem, but you get the thought: a real re-solution needs to address the problem not in terms of what y'all aren't doing often or well enough but at the very cadre, questioning the assumptions that the problem itself is grounded in. If you lot're stalled out in your career because you no longer have any passion for it and are just putting your fourth dimension in to collect a check, and so a career modify may well exist in order – and if so, then it no longer matters that y'all're stalled in your electric current career.
Let'due south effort applying this to a personal matter:
- Problem: You've been dating for months/years/decades and tin't seem to find someone with whom you're interested in a relationship.
- Resolution: Exit more. Join an online dating service. Visit a professional person matchmaker.
- Re-solution: What are yous really looking for in a partner? Maybe y'all're spending too much fourth dimension and energy dating people because you should be interested in them, not because you are. Or Peradventure you lot're dating anyone who seems interested in you lot at all "simply in case". Take fourth dimension to figure out the blueprint in your by dating life so act to consciously interruption that pattern.
Again, this may not be your re-solution, but the principle applies: whatsoever y'all're doing isn't working, so don't practice more of it, do something entirely unlike. And yous tin't know what to do differently without actually examining not just the behaviors that brand up your current practices but the reasons you are behaving that way in the first place.
For the terminal few weeks, that'due south exactly what I've been doing – re-thinking my goals, my choices, and my habits to see what just isn't helping to solve the things in my life that I'm non quite happy virtually. And, at the aforementioned time, the things I am – this isn't almost self-flagellation, only about an honest inventory of strengths and shortcomings, so that the one tin be practical to the other.
Two years agone, that process led me to comprehend a fledgling 2nd career as a author; last twelvemonth, it led me to seriously rethink my approach to relationships and what I wanted in a partner; this year, who knows? I recall I have some answers I didn't have a month ago – and I accept another 12 months to effigy out what to do with them.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/birthdays-self-reflection-and-a-better-year-ahead.html
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