For many years I refused to make new year’s resolutions. It seemed too arbitrary to be meaningful. Why bother resolving to change something because today happens to be the day randomly selected to start the calendar over again?
The problem with resolutions isn’t their arbitrary nature. It’s that the desire to change is a necessary but insufficient ingredient. Desiring to change something will not work unless we deploy systems and habits that support the change we seek to make.
Like all species, we are products of our environment. Most of what we do in a day is done without thinking. If you don’t like the results you’re getting, work backward from the result and look at each step that led you to where you don’t want to go. Along that chain reaction you will find habits and processes that you’re probably so used to, you don’t even think of them as habits and processes anymore.
A resolution to change is a necessary adjustment in your story about who you are and what the world is. Until you back it up with building new habits and systems, it’s a story that will probably never come to pass.
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