I love new year’s resolutions. I feel like it is a fun excuse to try some new habit, challenge myself in a small way, but, let’s face it, resolutions are made to be broken. Less than 50% of people last 6 months with their resolution, with 30% not even lasting one month. (stats from here) What if instead of resolutions we set goals for the year…would they be as easy to break? Would they be 10x more inspiring? Would they have the potential to really change our lives?
For my new year’s resolution last year, I gave up social media for a month. I was particularly enamored of Instagram, wasting more time than I want to admit browsing beautiful inspirational photos. Dropping it for a month had a huge impact on not only my instagram usage, but also my phone usage, and also on my book reading. Rather than scroll instagram, I would pick up my ebook on my phone and read for a few minutes if I was bored waiting in line. My month of no social media, inspired my resolution this year, to try a new habit every month. You can do anything for 30 days, so why not try some of the habits I am always curious about, but not curious about enough to do for more than 30 days….dry January, veganism, no sugar, journaling, etc. There are ton of new habits that sound interesting that I am looking forward to trying. But more than new healthier (or at least interesting) habits, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about bigger goals, that was at least until a couple of weeks ago. I was talking with a client about their 2020 goals and he was saying that none of his goals felt big enough, none of his goals scared him.
It was an interesting concept and one that I love. To be able to set big hairy audacious goals that inspire you to be your best, to stretch and reach and grow, so much that they scare you just a little. They scare you into thinking you might not reach them, that your life might not change and develop in the way you think, but are exciting enough that even though they scare you, you still want to reach for them . What if instead of resolutions, we thought more about setting our big goals for the new year? It is a lot harder to give up on a goal or should I even say a dream, than a resolution, which when we are honest we probably don’t even want to do anyway otherwise we would have already done it. Imagine setting a big goal for 2020 and what your life would be like if you reached it?! Imagine where you would be starting 2021. Who’s with me in changing their life, ditching resolutions, and instead setting big scary goals for 2020?!