New Year, New You? Part 1
Happy New Year!
I hope you had a great festive season.
This is no history lesson, but I believe that New Year’s Resolutions date back as far as 4,000 years, to the Babylonians. I fantasise over this race of perfect people who didn’t drink, smoke, swear, or mind themselves being slightly flabbier than the next person, should they have allowed themselves to get flabby in the first place!
I imagine that the ancient Babylonians’ resolutions would have been a contract between the person and one or more of their gods. “I’ll (try to) not kill as many people this year, if you let me and my family live in peaceful wealth” sort of thing.
OK. These aren’t Babylonians!!
The resolutions that we make today, though, are with a much harsher judge - ourselves. And our judgement is often swayed by external factors such as peer pressure, marketing and media, particularly social media.
Those perfect Babylonians would have been quaking in their boots if Ishtar had been on Tik Tok.
So, why Resolutions?
I think that resolutions are fundamentally a good thing.
As long as we’re not over-critical of ourselves, I believe that living reflectively, accepting that certain things are quite simply making us unhappy, and looking to replace those things, and to improve ourselves, is a healthy way of thinking and living.
It’s the often-epiphanic impact of the identification and enhancement of one’s areas of opportunity that drive much of my work.
Types of Resolution
I’m sure that there are some very niche resolutions out there, but I think that the five of the main types of resolution are:
I’m making no resolutions! Well that’s perfectly fine. Whether you’re completely comfortable with where you’e at in life, or have become frustrated and demotivated at past failures, you’ll be gald to hear that resolutions are not compulsory!
Cutting out/down on bad things: Giving up/cutting down on drinking, smoking, swearing, unhealthy foods, unhealthy isolation, etc.
Increasing positive elements: Exercise more, cook with more fresh products, improve diet, etc.
Introduction of new activities: Take up reading, running, cycling, join a club, make new friends, etc
Gratitiude: Enjoy life more, be more grateful for what you have, see/phone/text the brilliant friends that I already have more, etc.
I’m not sure of the climate in Babylon 4,000 years ago, but I’m guessing that the Babylonian resolution-maker didn’t have to de-ice the chariot in order to get to a decent running spot!
Having New Year bang in the middle of Winter is a great inconvenience. Surely it would be easier to bring in life-changing intent in Spring, or Summer? Probably not, in reality!!
Behaviour and Habit
For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to focus on types 2 and 3 above.
Although the wordings are slightly different, they both effectively involve replacing existing bad habits, with existing good habits.
If you want to give up a bad habit, you need to fill the time that you spent doing it, hopefully with a good, or at least better, habit. Likewise, if you want to increase time spent on a good habit, you’ll need to find the time from somewhere, hopefully by cutting down on a bad habit.
The Marble and the Limestone
A brilliant analogy I heard with respect to habitual behaviour is that it’s like rolling a marble down a slab of limestone.
If you keep doing it in the same way for long enough, the marble will create a furrow, down which it will start to roll each and every time.
The brain can work in the same way - if you repeat the same, often undesirable behaviour time after time, it can become your default behaviour, and it is then very difficult to veer off of that behavioural path.
The good news is that, in the same way that you could start rolling that marble down the limestone slab in different directions, and create different furrows that enable the marble to be able to access all areas of the slab, you can create new pathways in your brain, that will help you to change your thought patterns, and behaviours/habits.
I’m sure I’ll touch on this subject more in later posts, but these “furrows” in the brain are called neural pathways, should you wish to research them further now.
So, in summary, when we make a resolution, we are effectively saying that we are going to try and replace “bad” habits activities with “good” ones, and that this will involve creating new neural pathways in the brain
Some of the habits that we resolve to banish from our lives are things that we have been doing instinctively, often for decades.
Likewise, some of the things that we resolve to add to our lives are things that we have a desire for, but little or no experience of.
Even with the strongest will in the world, these changes are going to take time, and that’s the most important thing to bear in mind.
Your resolutions, let’s call them goals from now on, need to be achievable. And by achievable, I mean something that you can commit to for at least two months. That’s how long it can take to create effective new neural pathways.
Please don’t let “TWO MONTHS?!?” be daunting. I can promise you that it is possible. I’ve seen it happen, sometimes against all odds.
“Bad” Habits?
Bad though these habits may be, they do give your brain a “reward”.
I’m not going to delve into the science here, but dopamine is a chemical relaeased by the brain, and it is very strongly linked to what we perceive as “pleasure”.
It is not necessarily the nicotine in a cigarette that gives you pleasure, rather that it prompts the brain to release dopamine.
So, if you’re aiming to give up bad habits such as smoking, drinking, even fatty or processed foods, you are effectively vowing to give up one of your most trusted ways of producing dopamine. It can feel a pleasure-less and sad time, and anyone giving up a bad habit needs to be prepared for this inevitability.
It must be pointed out, too, that dopamine levels for most people are at their lowest levels during the Winter, and this is believed to be linked to SAD (see Sad, or SAD, blog published 20/12/22). So, actually, New Year being in the middle of winter CAN make the task, and/or motivation to complete it, more difficult.
How many of our goals fall by the wayside because, rather than making us feel much better as planned, we feel much worse in the short term?
For people going through this period of dopamine deficiency, it’s a huge leap of faith to try and believe that this will be a positive thing in the long run. But it is scientifically proven to be true!
Triggers
Whilst bad habits do effectively become default behaviour, they are often triggered by some event or thought pattern. Stress and boredom are common triggers. How many times have you seen someone react to stress or boredom by lighting a cigarette or pouring a drink?
But boredom and stress are not the only triggers. Some can be much more subtle. If, for example, your perfect end to the day is to sit on your favourite chair and have a ciggie, then merely sitting in that chair can become a trigger, over time. If you love to have a glass of wine whilst cooking, cooking can become a trigger.
Get to recognise your triggers, and be prepared to fight them if necessary. You certainly don’t want to be cutting sitting in your favourite chair or cooking out of your life, but you need to be aware that you could be risking a slip in the coming seconds or minutes. This gives you a valuable edge.
Be Kind to Yourself
The temporary shortage of dopamine caused by giving up these bad habits may make you feel down, so be ready to be kind to yourself.
You are not going to lose the desire to drink or smoke overnight and nor will you be running marathons in February. but you HAVE identified something that may well be doing you harm, and you ARE trying to do something about it. Wear that badge with pride.
At the end of the day, this is YOUR goal. OK, you might be doing it so that you can live longer and/or spend more quality time with loved ones, but it’s your goal.
In the absence of Babylonian gods, it is only you that will judge your performance. Do it kindly.
The next blog will contain some of the many tips that exist to help you achieve your goals.
Serious note: While these blogs are hopefully helpful, and the topics are often very serious, they are intended to have a light-hearted touch.
For some of you, cutting down down on booze for example may be required because you have reached a point where you think that the booze is winning. There is nothing light-hearted about that.
These blogs are not supposed to be cynical marketing tools, but if you think that you have a problem that cannot realistically be solved merely by making a resolution, please get in touch with me or another trained professional. You are much more likely to achieve your goals with help.