New Year: Don’t change, keep
It’s that time of the year when everyone talks about change, goals, and plans.
It’s that time when you promise to work out every day, to meditate for 1 hour, to make some yoga at 5.am., to learn a new language, and perhaps, to start a million-dollar business idea.
But besides the things you want to change, what do you want to keep? What did you do right this year? What habits do you want to continue? What friends do you still want to meet up with? What experiences do you want to re-do?
When talking about positive change, we immediately think of new habits to install. But, according to my humble perspective, when you add too many new things, you also have to take some off your plate. This means adding x, subtracting y. You only obtain a positive change when the things added have more value than the things removed. Pure maths here.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m also guilty of this New Year’s life-change obsession (and for the million-dollar business idea). And I absolutely love to add new habits and changes to my life, especially when a new year starts. But turns out I’ve been keeping positive habits throughout the year (as you did too).
Companies have two ways to instill certain behaviors — rewarding the good ones; “punishing” the bad ones. When you bring awareness to your good habits, you’re reinforcing your positive behaviors (Santa is watching you), which allows for more consistency and improvement.
Keeping the right habits, turns out, is as important as starting new ones. This is not homework, but I encourage you to come up with a list of all the great things you want to keep this new year!
In my case, the list includes:
Meditating — 2019 was the first year that I was fully committed to meditation and was pretty consistent with it;
Traveling — booked two trips with my friends impulsively (and cheaply), it was great;
Promoting campaigns regarding noble causes — through videos, posts and social media;
Worrying less — as an anxious person, I made some progress this year, and want to continue in this worrying-less-lifetime-journey;
Making money — this year I was able to make a few bucks in some of my projects. It is something I want to continue focusing on, possibly trying to expand to other streams of income (which I consider a new goal);
Being more courageous — courage is a skill and I’ve been making an effort to practice it more often, this means not running away from difficult conversations, trying new things and saying the right thing even when it would be more comfortable to stay silent;
Set goals, plan new routines, instill new habits and accomplish more this New Year. But give yourself credit for all the right things you did in the previous one, and keep them!