12/30/2022
Even if we do not prescribe to resolutions in the traditional sense, January 1st has all of us thinking about who we want to be in the year to come. The act has been repackaged and rebranded in many ways: intention-setting, 30-day challenges, a one-word promise to frame the whole year. But no matter how creative we get, we still struggle with getting in our own way.
Ambivalence is a very interesting piece of the human psyche.
I want and I don't want.
I want but I don't believe I can.
I want but I would feel guilty if I did.
We’re always playing this game with ourselves, but it intensifies around the new year. Our resolutions reflect this juxtaposition of self-criticism and self-optimization.
The simple statement that we will change makes us think that the parts of us we struggle with will disappear. We fantasize about that other person, the person we could be. Such magical thinking.
What if we tried to better understand how the parts of us which we perceive as shameful hold us back—instead of burying them under unfulfilled gym memberships and the dreaded quest to “be our most authentic selves?”
Truthfully, if we wanted to be our most authentic selves, we would binge-watch Netflix, eat cookie dough for breakfast, and never lean in to our most optimized selves—the versions of us that meditate and exercise daily, and travel the world while our well-invested money compounds in our well-managed accounts. Instead, we often reward our efforts by momentarily indulging in the very habits we’re trying to break. We rationalize that what we do in one moment doesn’t get in the way of the larger goal.
The reality is that we live in stereo. On one side: who we are. On the other: who we’d like to be. Between them, there’s another force at play—the person we no longer want to be, holding on to commitments that no longer serve us, ready to break a promise but unsure of how. What outdated stories are masquerading as promises in your life?
