Perfectly primed for change

Join licensed therapist Brian Heller for a deeper look at the final holiday of the year and it's significance in our culture. Explore the idea behind resolutions and strategies to deal with the setting of goals, the attempts to achieve goals, and those times when our hierarchy of importance changes for whatever reason and we don't accomplish what we set out to accomplish. Be well!

Transcript

E16: New Year’s resolutions

Hello and welcome back to the B Spot, the place that gives you almost therapy but not quite therapy. In our culture, there is no time of year more impacted by experiences than the last two months of the year. As mentioned in the last session, this is a time of year that is loaded with lots of powerful memories and associations. As summer turns to fall and nature starts to look, sound, and feel different than it did during the vibrancy of the bright days of summer, the synapses or connections in our brain start to play back for us years of familial and cultural ideals and expectations. Humans have often used this time of year and the holidays that occur, not only as opportunities to spend time with family, but also as opportunities to impart those cultural expectations and ideals.  We tell children stories about behaving well and feeling and expressing gratitude. We tell them what we expect from them, even if it goes against their nature. We explain to them how we would like for them to conform in order to fit into our ideas of how we all should be. 

And, as we pass through the November holidays, the holidays in December most often culminate with this thing that occurs for the last 24 hours of our calendar year, that we call New Year’s Eve. This is the time when we are supposed to reflect back on our year, and our life, and think of all the things we could have done better, or done more often, or less often. And we’re also supposed to party on the evening of that last 24 hours. Out with the old, in with the new. We are supposed to celebrate this as a time of emotional transition. And we are led to believe that at 11:59pm on the 31st of December, we are 60 seconds away from a magical transition from one year to the next. It is how we mark our time. One way we find structure and meaning in our existence. But what we find, or at least what I’ve found, year after year as we wake up on January first feeling no different than we did the night before, is that the idea of a New Year doesn’t actually change anything except the date. 

The ways that we have chosen to measure time allow us to have a general idea of what to expect from any given waking period or any given lifetime. Without the concept of time, it would be really difficult to plan anything with anyone so the humans that came before us decided it would be a positive and healthy addition to life as a human. Time is such an interesting construct on so many levels. On a daily basis time provides a structured outline of when we expect to be awake. It can apply pressure and motivation that help us get done the things we need to get done with the people we need to do those things with, or for. It allows for coordination. Once you step away from the daily timeline and use the concept of time to think about and try to understand the past and the future, things get a little more complicated. 

This idea is covered well in a classic holiday tale that I’m sure many of you have read or watched, and that we watched together as a family this year. Yes, I’m talking about A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens way back in 1843. Now Dickens did not create the ideas he wrote about in his Novella, but he certainly gets the credit for making them famous. Most of us are familiar with the story here about a grumpy stingy old man named Scrooge who gets visited by 3 ghosts that represent that past, present and future. Grumpy old Scrooge gets to see how others are impacted by his behavior and how his decisions are influencing the way that others feel about him, and he is so impacted by these things he’s allowed to see that he changes his evil ways. He finds redemption. He suddenly and passionately embraces the Christmas holiday and becomes kind and generous to all. Now before we play with the idea of the ghosts, let’s spend a minute talking about Mr. Scrooge and the lessons we are all supposed to learn from him. What does it mean today if you call someone a Scrooge? Well, it usually means that they have the audacity to not embrace Christmas. It may also mean they aren’t willing to share with others, but primarily it is what we call those who don’t get excited about Christmas, or especially those who are actively against this most important of all the Christian holidays. Bah Humbug! Yes, I know that Easter’s important too but it sure feels like Christmas is the one with the biggest fan base, or if we’re measuring in today’s terms, the most subscribers. So the message here is embrace Christianity or you suck. If this holiday doesn’t fit within your belief system, for whatever reason, you are likely a grumpy, greedy, miserable person. Dickens actually chose to share his concerns about poverty and social injustice through an emotional Christmas tale in order to reach a broader audience than he had previously with political pamphlets. He knew that tying his concerns to Christmas spirit would have the largest impact on the religious British elite.

So if anyone, by choice or chance, doesn’t embrace Christmas, they have a choice to either get on board with the majority or risk being thought of as a Scrooge. Just for a second, think about how isolating and hurtful that can be to those who ascribe to other theological perspectives. This session isn’t really the place to dive too much deeper into this corner of the conversation, but I found it interesting enough to mention, nonetheless. It’s just another example of how difficult it is to separate out religious influences, and specifically Christianity in our culture. For better or for worse, Christianity may as well be thought of as one of the threads used to sew that first American flag, and the idea that it can be separated out now without a complete deconstruction may be more of a fantasy than a real possibility.  

Well, since we’re talking about fantasy already anyway, it seems like a good time to transition to those 3 ghosts that visited Mr. Scrooge and took him on those elucidating journeys. The first ghost takes old Scrooge back to the early days so that he can begin his journey with some sympathy for himself and his childhood. It makes sense that it would be important to develop sympathy for yourself before you can be realistically expected to have sympathy for others. The 2nd ghost shows Scrooge how others show love and kindness, and how others are impacted by his significant shortfalls in those areas. He is also introduced to the concepts of ignorance and want and is told to especially fear ignorance. He is given a deeper understanding of his impact on the present moments of others. By the time the 3rd ghost shows up, Scrooge is perfectly primed to be receptive enough to make some major life changes based on what he sees in his future. Scrooge finds himself at his own funeral where he learns what people really thought about him during his life. He is understandably deeply shaken by this experience and wakes up committed to being a better human.

You might say he woke up on January 1st with many resolutions in mind, which is interesting because after we watched this movie together this year, my wife asked us all to think about what lessons those ghosts would have taught each of us. And that is exactly what this story was created to accomplish. I won’t go too deeply into the story of Charles Dickens, but while searching for trivia to share with my family, I did discover a few very interesting things. One of the driving forces behind the anger Dickens felt was the arrest and imprisonment of this father for financial charges, which led him to have to drop out of school at the age of 12 and go to work in a shoe blacking factory. And this apparently caused him to develop a “deep personal and social outrage.” 

Dickens was also both angry and concerned that the wealthy British elite were not bothered enough by the conditions and developing mindsets of the middle and lower classes. He proposed combatting ignorance with education but was largely ignored. It was a parliamentary report written in 1843 that exposed the effects of the industrial revolution on working class children, that motivated him to change tactics to reach a larger audience. He knew he could get more buy in by tapping into people’s emotions around Christmas.

A Christmas Carol was only the latest of Dickens’ attempts to inspire the British elite to resolve to treating poor people, and especially children, more humanely, with more charity and compassion.  And here we see another major dilemma still present in our culture today, but also an issue that doesn’t require a deeper dive for the purposes of this session. For today, just notice how we are all primed to reflect during this time of year, and how stories like A Christmas Carol give us all certain messages whether we notice it or not. Just like Scrooge being primed for change, we too are primed for change this time of year. We’ve just come through this period of big opportunities to spend time with our family we grew up with to remind us of where we come from, and then we got to experience the present moment by engaging in some form of holiday celebration with the people who surround us most now, and then, we all ride out that weird week between Christmas and New Years Eve and Day, when the year feels over, but it’s not over.

I’m not sure exactly what makes that week feel so weird but it’s some combination of the post-holiday letdown and the way that the world is just kinda open. Maybe it’s a carryover from when we were kids and usually out of school during this time. Whatever it is, it’s a weird week for me and many people that I talk to. With that January 1 date looming, this is often when we start to examine our lives to prepare ourselves to answer that inevitable question we will be asked at least once over the following week, and that is, “have you made any new years resolutions?” Just the prevalence of the question speaks to the pervasive nature of the idea. The idea that this is the time to assess and commit to fixing what is wrong! 

It’s so heavily ingrained that it’s become a successful business strategy for self-improvement opportunity providers like gyms and weight loss programs to offer great deals around the new year IF you’re willing to make a long-term commitment. These providers know that you are perfectly primed to turn over a new leaf or restart some sort of self-improvement activity because of the emotional buildup of the previous months. They also know that you are a human and humans do not often stay motivated in these directions for as long as they think they will when they are feeling exceptionally motivated.  So, they try to get ya while the gettins good. And people will fall for all sorts of wildly unrealistic claims, especially if it hits on that thing that you know you wish you did more of or less of, or that aspect of yourself you would like to change. 

The point is that we are all primed to have this experience every year just by the way our most commonly celebrated holidays are scheduled, combined with our deeply uncertain and often wounded psychological nature. This truth makes us vulnerable to those whose job it is to sell you an idealized version of yourself. Not only can this end up costing you a lot of money, but it can also negatively impact the way you see yourself. It goes back to that idea about comparing your actual self with your ideal self as a measure of self-esteem. Those ideal versions of ourselves often come bubbling up to the top around January 1st and when we compare that with whatever our actual self has been up to, we will usually come up short. To close the gap and raise self-esteem, we don’t always have to lower our ideal self, sometimes we need to improve our actual self. Remember that this is a spectrum and that we can wiggle our way down on both ends to get these two closer together and improve the way we feel about ourselves. Resolutions can be dangerous if we put too much pressure or judgment on ourselves because of how emotionally loaded this time of year already is. Am I coming down too hard on resolutions? 

What’s the problem with making resolutions to do things differently? Is there any harm in having this specific day designated to such things? A day designated to the possibility of redemption by making improvements? If Scrooge can find redemption through resolutions to do things differently, perhaps we can too? That story sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? If we reflect both deeply and honestly on our lives, most of us can come up with some things we’d like to see ourselves do differently.  Most of us know where we struggle. We know what we do too much of and what we do too little of. Even if we are too proud to share that awareness with anyone except maybe our pillow late on a sleepless night, we know. 

Maybe It’s the lifelong pressure to see this time of year as a time of change or maybe you’re just fed up with yourself for not living the life you want to live. There really isn’t any problem with resolutions, and even New Year’s resolutions, as long as you treat yourself kindly throughout the process realizing what needs to change, coming up with a plan to change it, and then dealing with challenges that come up along the way. So I guess resolutions are good if they provide motivation to make positive improvements in your life. They become problematic when they’re used to put yourself down for not living life as your ideal self, or when used as an ongoing source of self punishment if motivations wane, as they often do, or when obstacles feel too real to ignore. So, what do you do if you’ve decided that now really is the time that you want to make some change in your life?

Well, the first step to any change is to make a commitment. Commitments to yourself can be effective but if you really want to set yourself up for success, tell anyone who will listen about the changes you’re going to make. Not only does this build up a fanbase for you as you embark on this journey of life improvement, but it also locks you in to doing this thing now. See when we’re trying to make some change, especially if we are trying to stop doing a thing that has addictive qualities, our brains will make lots of attempts to talk us out of our conviction to change. However, if we have told others, we are less likely to give up and revert back to whatever behavior we’re trying to change. This also allows us to be honest in ways we haven’t always been. Most of us are unaware of just how much energy we spend trying to hide our less desirable behaviors, trying to engage in our less desirable behaviors, and how liberating it will feel when we actually uphold those commitments we make to ourselves to change those  less desirable behaviors.

Another helpful thing you can do to give yourself the best shot at successfully changing some aspect of your life is to write down the reasons for the change, during those moments when your motivation is clear and strong. Make a list of all the reasons you want to change and keep the list in plain sight, or even carry it with you so that when your brain starts to tell you all the reasons the change isn’t really necessary, you can push back those lies with your truth.  The thought challenging strategies mentioned in other sessions will also be helpful to deal with those nagging justifications and rationalizations that pop up when trying to add or subtract some thing from your life. Don’t take the BS that you brain feeds you as fact without first verifying its truth through a rational analysis. Remember, if you can’t prove it, it’s not rational. So, for example, if you are trying to stop drinking this year, your brain may try and convince you that you shouldn’t quit now because of some upcoming event that will “require” you to drink in order to have fun. As you examine that thought rationally, it’s not hard to see that you cannot prove that you will need alcohol in order to enjoy the upcoming event. So, allowing that irrational thought to stop you from making a positive change in your life today is not rational either. And one of our ongoing goals as humans who are looking to have a positive experience of living life, is to think more rationally, or at least to allow fewer of our experiences to be negatively impacted by irrational thoughts. 

Now, you might be thinking, hey Brian, you’re a little late on this resolution talk, and I don’t disagree with you. It was my initial intention, or maybe even my resolution to record this session before the New Year, but it just didn’t happen. One of the reasons it didn’t happen was because I wanted to make the point that we don’t need a specific date to make a change. Our new year, or new way of doing something or not doing something can start any day. The power to change is always with us. However, the powers that work against change are also always with us and we humans really are creatures of habit. Disrupting our ways of doing things requires a cognitive shift that is not only really hard to initiate, but also so challenging to maintain over time. We are biologically designed to do today what helped us survive yesterday, and breaking that pattern by doing something different, sets off all types of alarms in our brain, and can create a sense of panic over doing this new thing, or not doing that old thing. 

Now, I said that the lesson was one of the reasons for releasing this session after the New Year instead of before, but the main reason is that I just didn’t get it done. I made the decision at several points to spend time with my family rather than focusing on the podcast and I feel good about those decisions. I’m not mad at myself and it doesn’t make me critical of myself and my abilities. It just reflects a change that took place in my hierarchy of importance. This is a healthy way to make a resolution, and attempt to follow through with that resolution, and to deal with not accomplishing that resolution.  And let’s be real, the majority of the changes we commit to making are more important to us at some times than at others. You might say their position on our hierarchy of importance changes over time. When this happens, all we have to do is reevaluate without judgment. Allowing myself to be excused for not accomplishing my initial resolution, helps me to stay in an emotional space where I can still accomplish the thing I wanted to do, which in this case, is recording this session. Had I chosen to be critical of myself for not meeting my initial goal, that self-criticism would have created a lot of negative energy that would likely make it more difficult for me to be doing this now.

Resolutions are not only a once-a-year kind of party. If you made a resolution on January 1st and on January whatever, you realize you have not been as perfect, or ideal, as you would like, instead of beating yourself up and resigning yourself to “try again next year,” reevaluate the change you wanted to make and see how important it feels today. If it still feels important, step back onto the change train and see how well you can do this time. If, during the reevaluation, you realize that the thing you wanted to do just doesn’t feel important enough anymore to be worth the negatives that go with the change, be honest with yourself about it and don’t be mad. If you find that level of importance rising again in the future, even if it isn’t during that weird last week of the year, resolve to change it. Focus on changing for a day, not for a year. The biggest changes and happiest lives come from stringing together moments to make days and days to make years, moments when we make that decision that feels right to us and we experience the liberation of authenticity. 

Thank you for joining me for another session of Almost Therapy at the B Spot, and for joining me on this journey towards that liberation that comes with authenticity to self. Notice that there is no implication of perfection within the concept of authenticity. Be who you are and accept that your hierarchy of importance will change over time. Just because you make a commitment to yourself and fall short, does not mean that the change is not still available to you, it only means that for one reason or another, it slid down your importance scale. Accept that without judgment and accept that willingness to reevaluate, continuously, is a necessary component to staying authentic, and finding joy and happiness. I know statistics can be powerful, so let’s close this session out with this one. 100% of people are flawed. One of my sisters introduced me to the term flawsome, and that’s what I think we are. Alright flawsome humans, if you know any other flawsome humans, and you think they’d benefit from any of these sessions, please share. Also, don’t forget that you can influence the topics covered in this podcast. Email me at bhellercounseling@gmail.com with any thoughts, questions, concerns or dilemmas and I’m glad to discuss those issues with you and help you move in a positive direction. We humans deserve to move in positive directions, and it is my hope that you, today, find that positive direction that fits you! Until our next session, be well.