So, did you end up making new year’s resolutions or did my previous post scare you off?
This year I made some cheater’s resolutions instead. What’s a cheater’s resolution? It’s the equivalent of finishing a task and then writing it on your todo list just so you can have the satisfaction of checking it off. It’s when you trick yourself into doing something by just making it super easy to do — the opposite of applying willpower.
Which is why, since the first week of December I’ve started working on a couple of goals that I wanted to do for the start of 2018. By starting early, I gained a couple of benefits:
- No pressure! New Year’s Resolutions are kind of fraught. In addition, they often hold the seeds of failure within them. If they were so important, why did you wait until Jan. 1st to start them?
- No hard deadline! Some things are easier if you ease into them. Like a change in your eating or stopping smoking. So you get going and it takes time to figure out what works for you. There’s not one moment where everything changes… it’s a process.
- Time! The end of December is often a time when people have days off. I had a number of them this year. That leaves time for making changes and getting them set as habits before the busy start of the year.
So for this New Year, I got to write down resolutions knowing that I’d already made headway on them — I am a complete cheater!
But what happens if you didn’t make cheaters resolutions? Well, make them now. Decide that you will do something for Groundhog Day / Imbolc / Candlemas… but start now so you can cheat when you get there!
