Sunday, December 30, 2007

Making Appropriate New Year's Resolutions

Making resolutions, or setting new goals, can be done at any time. Certain "transition times", such as birthdays, the start of summer, a new school year, or retirement can be good times for resolutions and setting new goals, though they can be really done at any time. Of course the period around New Year's day is the traditional time for making new resolutions in our culture. I have a membership at a local fitness center, and those of us who are long time regulars there get a chuckle the first week in January which is always the busiest week of the year. We know that things will return to normal by the end of the month.

Finding appropriate New Year's resolutions can be a tricky thing. Ideally it should be something realistic that you can accomplish in the coming year. Consider an impressive grand goal, such as "develop a 2nd career that you can follow after you retire". That's a great goal, but one that involves many steps and spans many years. On the other extreme, consider one such as "cleaning out the basement". Another worthwhile goal, but it's something that takes much less than a year (hopefully). Neither of them are really ideal New Year's resolutions.

After giving this some thought, here are some New Year's resolutions I'm considering making. Note that I am writing these down in a public way, which helps to increase the odds that I will actually keep most of them.

Health - to enable a long active life:
- Jog at least 500 miles (something I've successfully done for the past 2 years)
- Make an appointment for a physical by January 15th
- Restrict coffee to normally at most one small cup a day

I considered "eating healthy" and "getting more sleep", but these seem too vague with no defined targets or plans to be useful resolutions in those forms.

Simplify / Unclutter My Life - allowing more focus on what's important:
- Start with the bedroom in January - remove anything not related to sleeping or dressing. Simplifying your life, not just rearranging things, can call for drastic changes ;-)
- Continue with one or more uncluttering projects per month.
- Unclutter my mind: Simplify, organize, and plan my schedule on an ongoing basis. Edit down my list of projects based on my major goals. Experiment with some new techniques to reduce and manage information overload. Learn and practice new approaches to become more patient.

Other Interests:- Become known nationally in the small but growing "Great Turning" community by participating in discussions, writing articles, giving presentations, writing in my Provocative Futures blog, and taking other initiatives.

Didn't I just say above that a goal of simplifying my life involved editing down (reducing) my list of things that I'm working on? Hmmm... not off to a great start, am I?

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Making and Keeping New Year's Resolutions

It’s the time of the year when people traditionally think about New Year’s resolutions. I did some research on what the experts had to say about these resolutions and came up with some interesting thoughts I’d like to share with you.

How to fail:
1) Picking resolutions at the last minute without adequate thought, especially if they are based on what happens to be on your mind at that moment.
2) Trying to make too many resolutions
3) Pick ones that your friends want, or that seem socially proper, instead of ones that you are really internally motivated to pursue.
4) Being unrealistic and underestimating the effort required.
5) Being too abstract, or just plain frivolous. Examples include “getting fit” or “having more fun”. These are too difficult to develop a detailed plan for, especially when there’s no time frame in mind. “Winning the lottery” is another example of a frivolous goal - you cannot develop a detailed and realistic plan to accomplish it.
6) Framing your resolutions as absolutes by saying, "I will never do X again."
7) Being too critical of yourself and giving up on the resolution as a failure.

How to succeed:
1) Pick the right resolution: Your resolution statement should include why you want to make the resolution, and/or a description of the benefits you expect from achieving it. You should have a strong initial motivation to work on this resolution. Give yourself adequate time to think the resolutions through. Start well before New Year’s Eve, and don’t consider Jan 1st as a hard deadline. It’s better to take a few weeks in January to come up with the right resolutions and plans than to commit yourself to a poor resolution after 15 minutes of thought on New Year’s Eve.
2) Work on a small number at a time. Your best success rate will come if you work on one at a time.
3) Frame the goal in terms of specific things you will do on a schedule. Instead of “getting fit”, resolve to “get fit by exercising 3 times a week starting next week”.
4) Develop a specific thought-out plan for how to achieve your goal and write it down. Include sub-goals that you need to accomplish along the way, and small rewards when you achieve them. Also include plans for what you will do when you face difficulties or temporary setbacks. Have coping strategies to deal with problems that will come up.
5) Get started immediately when the motivation is high. Or if the motivation is not high, get started immediately anyway. Action will increase your motivation level and help you build momentum.
6) Don’t be an extreme perfectionists. Look at temporary failures as growth and learning experiences. The key to success is often the ability to keep going in spite of the temporary setback along the way. Remain flexible - expect that your plan can and will change.
7) Don't keep your resolutions to yourself. It helps to share your goals with friends. It builds your own resolution to succeed, and your friends can gently nudge you in the right direction when you veer off course.
8) Remind yourself every day - After a few months, a resolution has a tendency to work its way out of your mind and off your to-do list. One way to combat this is to create a simple reminder, such as writing your resolution down on a small piece of paper and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom. Do this simple action is a good way to judge how serious you really are about achieving the resolution.
9) Keep track of your progress, monitor how you’re doing, and make adjustments when necessary.


Some great links that I found helpful:
How to keep up with those New Year's resolutions,
researchers find commitment is the secret of success


New Years Resolution Results

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Thoughts for the coming year

Some thoughts for the coming year:

May you get what you want, and not what you deserve.

May the good guys win.

Friday, December 21, 2007

The Dangers of Fear and Anger

One rule I learned over the years from personal experience is that you should never make decisions based on the motivations of fear or anger. This tends to lead to some very bad decisions. Things tend to work out much better in the long run when you use compassion and respect as the main factors motivating your final decisions.

There was an interesting article in the recent edition of Newsweek on the role fear plays in our politics and elections. It’s an unfortunate fact that some politicians can successfully use fear to get elected or to promote their policies. This has a serious danger of leading to some very bad decisions.
“… fear tends to overrule reason… [it] hobbles our logic and reasoning circuits. That makes fear far far more powerful than reason”

The article goes on to say that:
“And when a candidate reminds voters of their fears about one issue, it can have a powerful spillover effect: Fear that you cannot provide for your family because of an economic downturn can translate into hatred for immigrants”

So here’s the lesson for today – on a personal level do not let fear or anger run your life or drive your decisions. And on a national level do not let fear or anger drive your policy or decide your elections. Here's to hoping that in the coming elections the politics based on a vision of cooperation and compassion win out over those based on a vision of fear and anger. Experience from the last several years tells us that the later motivations tend to lead to some very bad outcomes, and I think people are open to a change.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The Meaning of Centering

I’ve heard the terms “centering” and “centering prayer” used on many occasion, but I was never sure exactly what they meant, so I did a little research.

In the Christian tradition, centering prayers were intended to quiet the mind and open oneself up to the influence of God.

In sports, centering refers to a technique for staying focused and avoiding distractions. It helps an athlete stay in the moment and release past and future thoughts, worries and plans, and redirect their focus from the negative or anxiety-causing event to the present task. This process aims to keep you in the present, help you drop any baggage you carry about performance anxiety, expectations, and worries.

Centering often works best with regular practice. It can be aided by focusing on a slow, steady pace of breathing. This is often accompanied by repeating a key word (mantra) that helps you refocus on what you want to do.

But centering also refers to achieving a sense of balance in your life as a whole. To me this means being neither too busy nor too idle, neither too excited nor lethargic, calming the emotions that are pulling you to one side of the other. Being centered means remaining calm amidst the business of everyday life, and not being diverted by stressful circumstances or negative thoughts and emotions. Being centered means both being able to focus on the present, while simultaneously keeping in mind what is truly important in the long run.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Morning Affirmations

Experienced people sometimes recommend that a great way to adjust your attitude is to start each day with a morning affirmation. The recommended time is the first thing in the morning before you get out of bed, and literally before you open you eyes if possible. I started doing this and it does seem to both improve my attitude and help me keep my priorities straight.

Most of the examples of such morning affirmations tend to be a simple sentence. I started that way, but over the course of a few months I kept adding to it. My current morning affirmation has grown to the following:

I will let compassion, respect, gratitude, and an optimistic view of a better world guide my decisions and actions today.

It's a great way to start out the morning. How can you wake up grumpy after that?

Friday, December 7, 2007

Developing a Growth Mind-set

I found a lot of useful insight in a recent article in Scientific American Mind by Carol S. Dweck. The article is titled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, but it contains many useful comments on success and failure in general. For example, in one study it was shown that after repeated failures, most animals concluded that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. From then on, the animals tended to remain passive even when they could affect events. They were in a state called learned helplessness. How often do we find ourselves in such a state with regards to a situation?

Now consider the attitudes in children towards successes and failures in school, in particular with their beliefs about why they fail. Children with a fixed mind-set believed intelligence was innate and fixed. Making mistakes or even the need to exert an effort was seen as a weakness, an indication that they lacked ability, which often lead to a downward spiral of further failures and learned helplessness.

Children with a growth mind-set believed that intelligence was malleable and can be improved though work and education. They viewed mistakes as something to be overcome and an opportunity to improve, as if the brain was a muscle that gets stronger with use. One inspiring student was observed to respond to a problem by pulling up a chair, rubbing his hands together, and saying “I love a challenge!” Students with such attitudes performed better academically in the long run that gifted children with the fixed mind-set.

How do you transmit a growth mind-set to children (or develop it in yourself)? They key way was to praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. Instead of saying “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must be smart”, use an alternative praise of the form “Wow, that’s a really good score – you must have worked very hard.” We can encourage similar attitudes in ourselves in a variety of fields by consciously deciding to view failures as challenging learning opportunities, and to be more proud of our efforts than our natural intelligence or skills when we do succeed. We should try to view ourselves as agents of our own brain development.