Start Your New Years Resolution On December 21st
So much to change, so little time.
A colleague of mine keeps the department office stocked with everything decadent — chocolate, donuts, name it. He brings it.
It all ends up on my desk. Where I try, with varying amounts of success, not to indulge.
Today, this same colleague shocked me.
I walked up to him with a tray of sugar cookies my husband had baked from scratch last night, and he said, “No, thanks.”
“No?” I must have looked dumbfounded because he laughed.
He said, “I want to be the 7%”.
I blinked, still holding my tray of sugar cookies out toward him.
“7%”?
He said, that’s the percentage of people who are able to lose weight in December.
Truth bomb. I think of myself as being “fit” or at least oriented toward fitness.
I think of being fit as being part of my lifestyle, and part of that also includes healthy food choices.
But here I was, mid-December, offering white death (sugar topped with more sugar) to people I think of as friends.
What gives?
I think it’s the December slide.
And according to Habit Master James Clear, every action counts. Each small step is another point in the slide towards or away from the person you want to be.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.
James Clear
It starts with the wallet. Then creeps into electricity consumption. Then food. Then a day or two off of the routine.
And the next thing you know, you’re part of the 93% sporting an extra 5–10 pounds because all the just this onces added up to a lot of rich food, alcohol, and missed gym days — which in turn translate to extra inches across the waist.
It’s easy enough to do — and in truth, everything in North American culture encourages over-indulgence in some form or another.
North Americans love indulgence almost as much as we love flogging ourselves for over indulging afterwards.
We even encourage our friends to do it— lighten up — it’s the holidays, we say to each other.
Psychologically, this is good habit suicide. As soon as you start saying, just this once, you have taken the control away from your systems, and instead have created a condition where each moment from that point on is going to require you to muster up your will power.
And I don’t care who you are. Will power is hard to sustain. Really hard. It’s exhausting.
That’s why we build habits in the first place. That’s why we need systems. And that’s why breaking our habits can wreak such damage.
What are we really doing here?
Sure, if you want to indulge, go ahead, but if you want to create healthy habits, then the time with the biggest stressors are precisely the times when you need these habits most.
And when you let go during this season, it is so much harder to start back up again in low energy January.
Why is that?
Because the kind of lifestyle habits that involve work and delayed rewards are the easiest ones to back out of if we give ourselves a choice.
The problem with holiday bingeing is that it’s hard to stop. Sleep in once, and the body is going to tell you you need to sleep in the next day.
And, as Happiness Guru Shawn Achor says, having to decide whether to do a positive habit or not is inviting failure:
If you’ve ever tried to start up the habit of early-morning exercise, you have probably encountered how easy it is to get derailed by too much choice.
Shawn Achor
As soon as the system breaks down, the habits will too.
And it’s not easy to get them back.
More people are depressed in January in any other month. Is it any wonder most people’s New Year’s Resolutions fizzle before the month is done?
This is why NOW is the perfect time for a resolution.
The beauty of the Solstice is that it is literally our darkest moment.
The solstice is the shortest day of the year. Every day from that begins to get a little lighter.
If you live in the North, like I do, that’s a big deal.
The solstice is the true New Year. It marks the return of the light. Why not also use it to start and mark the return of your own light?
