Looking through the dream portal — Street art by Seth

5 years ago I started a New Year’s resolution group with some friends

Here’s what happened …

An artist, an accountant, a management exec and an entrepreneur; I wasn’t sure the group or our resolutions would stick. But I at least wanted to understand why they did or didn’t work.

It started out as a low maintenance support group. We gathered on 31 December for a couple of hours to commit our intentions, then met up every few months to track progress.

We had to show up, be deadly honest about what transpired across the year; and observe — more witness to each other’s commitment than judge and jury.

I had another motivation. After tracking the outcomes of my own Resolutions for a few years, I was testing a theory that with big life goals, we often get what we wish for on a two or three-year time delay (assuming we hang in there). But too often we get discouraged and give up early — seeing one year as the perfect (but unrealistic) time capsule for goal setting.

As we approach our fifth year, the life changes in the group are profound. We have all spent significant periods of time living in other countries, changed career direction, lost and found people we love intensely. We’ve written books, bought and sold houses and businesses, started new ventures. and in my case, got married and started to raise a family. Many of these changes seemed like vague possibilities when we were venturing out on our first year of intentions. Most of these outcomes feel like successes because they were consciously achieved.

Not everyone aced their resolutions each year; we seemed to take it in turns. Most people had at least one or two years where they were a point of inspiration for the rest of the group. Everyone had at least one year where it was a struggle to show up at all.

Whilst progress felt painfully slow – and often elusive – on a daily basis, the achievements seem inspiring looking back over a four year period

5 things I learned about the best of intentions:

1. Plan well in advance — the idea of raising a glass on New Year’s eve and rattling off a few half-drunk ideas about what will happen when the clock strikes midnight seems insane to me now. The build-up to my New Year’s intentions now starts weeks in advance. I note down things that I feel drawn to towards in the coming year. I throw out a bunch of questions for everyone to reflect on so we can have a more meaningful discussion on the day. New Year’s Day is now my favorite day of the year — rather than something I feel panicked about.
2. Don’t obsesses about goals, set a theme for the year and focus on having that experience — Life is messy and unpredictable. This is a personal plan not a business plan and the real KPIs are happiness and positive feelings at the end of the day — not a list of conquests. Goals can also tend to follow stereotyped measures of success – things we feel we “should” be aspiring too. Rather than granular, fixed goals, we worked in thematics then tried to stay open to what showed up around that theme, to use it as a decision making guide. In 2017, I went for three thematics; I wanted to experience more beauty, truth and community. There were a bunch of tangible goals beneath each theme but I’ve always found the most satisfying outcomes are aligned, yet unexpected. Here’s just a few examples — We bought an old house with beautiful bones in a street which happens to have one of the best communities I’ve ever encountered in a big city. Finding that house was 3 years in the making – finding that community took 20 years. The first day we moved in, we were invited to dinner with our new neighbours, there was a street party a few week’s later and the kids in our street run in and out of each other’s houses all the time. Luck? Or a combination of putting it out there and responding when it shows up? Art was not on my list of ‘beauty’ goals but this year I managed to secure an artwork from my favourite artist which would ordinarily be well beyond my budget. The ‘truth’ side of 2017 was more confronting — there were many moments of painful truth. I wouldn’t change them. I now understand that raw truth is often the passport to beauty. These experiences may have felt like random drop ins – but they counted for me because they aligned with my focus for the year.
3. Don’t focus on what you are giving up — focus on what you want to experience— For year’s I wrote out NY resolutions in sentences which all contained the words “give up.” As a symbol of this wrong-footed approach to goal setting, one year I set my list on fire as part of a ritual. It burned almost completely on both sides, leaving a long line of words in the middle with the word “fear” which refused to go up in smoke. I realised as I stared at the smoking paper that my default theme for that year was fear — a huge negative. Every sentence on that page was about giving up my fears. Whilst that is a noble pursuit, it feels terrible spending a year thinking about what you ‘dont want’ or ‘don’t want to be.’ These days, I prefer to focus on the benefits of change (and frankly it’s far more motivating). So I keep flipping the focus until I find the positive outcome and focus on that.
4. Keep a written record — it may seem obvious, but there is absolute power in writing things down and looking back on those words.
5. Have a support group of committed people Even if the effect of the group is a placebo, it’s a pleasant one — there’s a loyal friend on the side-lines of our life to acknowledge our achievements or rally us to keep going. Tracking achievements with friends creates deep insights about your life and the human condition. It’s so much easier to recognise our patterns and challenges looking over someone’s shoulder than when we look in the mirror.
6. Ok so I have six insights, not five but expect the unexpected. Understand that when you set an intention sometimes the opposite thing shows up first. I call that the intention test and I have learned to ride through it. That’s all part of the process

Our lives have changed significantly over half a decade — this year we are forced to Skype everyone in over four different time-zones with one friend changing her life so profoundly she has resigned her job and has moved back to the UK. Another just moved to Noosa for a lifestyle shift and the new person in our group is adventuring in Vietnam; something she was too scared to contemplate two years ago. It’s been amazing understanding the true source of these life changes, and to know they were consciously planned choices — stemming from what those people wanted more of in their life.