Why You Can’t Stick to Your New Years Resolution
Five Insights from Jordan Peterson and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Here are five reasons why you struggle with sticking to your New Years resolution, and goals.
1. You have no vision for your life.
Of all the goals you could have, is there one ultimate vision that can unify them all? and if so, what should that vision be? Can’t think of one? Here’s the vision of western culture
Be the type of person that willingly confronts the challenges that challenge you
Jordan Peterson recommends setting that as your highest order goal. If you do that then that turns you into a truth-telling hero
This will mean you’ll need to confront the problems of life voluntarily. And you can’t do that without courage, and a willingness to face the truth.
This vision is a way of being rather than an objective, or achievement.
2. Your goals are fundamentally meaningless.
If you are a human being in the year 2023, you must have goals that matter.
Why? Goals give you purpose. Having purpose is a breath fresh air amidst the stench of carrion carried in the souls of western man: Nihilism.
Nietzsche’s own life goal was the discovery & creation of meaning in a world where metaphysical ideas about God and “purpose” had broken down — Nate Anderson
We’re here—123 years after Nietzsche death. We’ve inherited his world. Modern man’s legacy is one of meaninglessness and Godlessness. Look no further than mass shootings.
3. You lack vitality because of your unfocused goals.
When Nietzsche talks about goals, he refers to channeling the vital energies of the body. When you channel your life force in a unified direction, you accomplish things, and you get rewarded with actual vitality.
Here’s a metaphor
It’s like life is playing you as a character in a video game. And she uses a chemical controller. If you perform life affirming tasks like approaching that girl and asking her out, or hitting a new deadlift personal record, life hits the vitality button and your body gets filled with higher levels of testosterone, endorphins, and a host of other molecular factors that benefit your well-being. When you eat poorly, are stuck in fear and anxiety, life dumps your body with cortisol, and inflammation.
Nietzsche wants us to create goals to help channel our passions in a unified direction, so that you enhance your chances of victory, and so that life rewards you with more vitality.
4. Your goals don’t inspire you.
Evolution is predicated upon the struggle for life. Nietzsche thought that creative struggle was therefore a bedrock principle of existence. To him a well-lived life embraced unceasing creative struggle.
Nietzsche wants you to create goals so that your life force can creatively express itself. Use your goals to channel and fuel your creative expression Create goals that allow you to manifest your inner world in the outer world.
5. The goal behind your goals isn’t excellence
Greek culture saw life as a constant struggle in the pursuit of excellence. Conformity and safety constrain our spirit, and make us weak. It stops us from discovering what we are uniquely excellent at.
To Nietzsche, excellence wasn’t an end-state. It required continual self overcoming.
“And this secret life itself spoke to me: “behold,” it said, “I am that which must always overcome itself…whatever I may create and however I may love it — soon I must oppose it and my love, thus my will want it.” —Zarathustra
To pursue excellence, become a warrior.
