Scrap the goals, add a theme.
As the New Year rolls in and resolutions are made with low expectations and high hopes, I’ve come to realize that our societal mindset about a New Year is flawed.
New Years resolutions are typically dream goals based around hopes or wishes rather than something to work towards. We begin these goals with the idea that we might do them, we might not. They are so ridiculous that failure is usually expected.
Why even bother?!
At the beginning of 2015, I decided not to set a goal but add a theme to my year. My theme was More. Everything. I wanted to drum more, gig more, write more, learn more. I wanted to offer more of myself and services to my artists, my students, my family. Just more of everything. Of course, I didn’t want to sacrifice quality so I added the More theme to the quality argument. More quality.
Through 365 days, I kept this in mind. There wasn’t a goal involved. I didn’t start anything with the intention to get from point A to point B. There wasn’t any chance of failure. Only more success. If I happened to forget to add More to whatever I was doing, it wasn’t a loss, it was simply a return to how I would’ve done things in the first place.
By now, you might be thinking about how you could adjust your New Years Resolution to make it more like a theme. This is a great place to start. Maybe think of a couple things you might want to accomplish. It could be to lose weight, work out, stop smoking, go on a vacation, anything. Then start looking for something in common that might take you closer to these goals.
For the previously mentioned examples, maybe you could add Motivation to your year. Or maybe Health. When you add a theme, you aren’t adding any sort of plan of action, you’re adding something you will think about everyday for the rest of the year.
This is the exciting part!
As a human being, the only thing we have to do to change something, is to think about it. By thinking about Motivation, for instance, you’ll start to ask yourself quesitons like “why aren’t I motivated?” and “what does motivate me?” and in turn, you will answer them. Of course, that’s just one example. There are many others.
If you do choose to add a theme to your year, there’s one other major perk to think about, and I noticed this as I took a moment to reflect on my year. The minor changes that have occured in my life from adding a theme to my year were never forced and almost unnoticed. I created positive, beneficial habits without putting forth much effort to try to create them. Since, it was mostly on accident that they happened, they are permanent.
A theme isn’t for everyone, though. It is a challenge to keep something at the front of your mind for so long. Through the stress and clutter of life something so very small is likely to be forgotten.
Try writing it down. Preferably somewhere close to where your attention lies often. Maybe your bathroom mirror, maybe your computer monitor. Any where that’s difficult to get away from. Rewrite it as many times as needed.
Throughout the year, I will be posting more about my personal adventure with my theme for 2016. If you plan on adding a theme to your New Year, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or Snapchat and I’ll be glad to help you stay accountable.
Good luck and Happy New Year!
