Q&A 46 – New Year’s Resolutions Are BS

When we expect change to happen as a result of will-power naturally it looks like a good idea to choose a day on the calendar to begin making that change. But, really, change happens via insight, and that can happen any day of the year.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

* Welcome to 2024

* The admirable motivation behind New Year’s Resolutions

* The two things we can do instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions

* What actually creates lasting change

Transcript of this episode

Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 46 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.

If you’re listening to this on the day it goes out, it’s going out on New Year’s Day 2024. So welcome to a new year. I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’m usually ready for the holidays to be over, I have to say. I just really like getting back to some sort of semblance of normalcy.

I do kind of enjoy the holidays. There’s a bit of baggage there that I won’t talk about now. But you know, it’s different. I travel a little bit and I go and see friends. And it’s nice to be doing some different things and going out for meals and doing whatever it is we do. For some of you that will be getting together with family and that kind of thing. And then I’m kind of glad when the chaos is over.

Today, it’ll be New Year’s Day as you’re listening to this, and I’m probably going to have a pretty quiet day, I like to have a quiet New Year’s Day. So I hope you’re doing whatever makes you happy as well.

Let’s talk about why New Year’s resolutions are BS.

Before I jump into that, I just want to give a quick caveat. And say that there’s nothing wrong with goal setting. There’s nothing wrong with dreams and goals and all that kind of stuff. I personally am someone who loves lists. I always have lists on my desk of things I like to accomplish. And I feel really good when I’m able to highlight them that they’re done. That’s my method of dealing with lists of to dos. And it’s good to have goals and didn’t have things that we want to accomplish in life.

So everything I’m about to say is not to disparage that kind of dreaming and goal setting and all that kind of stuff.

There’s a reason that New Year’s resolutions are BS, according to me. And it’s because of the way that we go about them.

When we make a New Year’s resolution, and let’s be honest, they’re so often around weight loss and exercise, aren’t they? Those are the articles that we see in the media that we see on the television, morning programs and all that kind of thing. It’s about making a newer, better you and that you can start that on New Year’s Day.

I’m going to go back to the iceberg metaphor in order to illustrate this. I shared that metaphor in Episode 44, which was a couple of weeks ago. New Year’s resolutions are like the ice pick on that iceberg.

The way that we go about making new year’s resolutions and trying to change has that real ice pick kind of approach. And it’s that that we’re mistaken about.