It’s pretty clear that making resolutions and then “trying to stick to them” (AKA willpower) doesn’t work. But it’s equally true that when January 1st rolls around we are tempted to see it as a “clean slate”, an opportunity for new beginnings to improve our lives. 

If setting goals and trying to use willpower doesn’t work, what other options do we have?

Is there a way to use the New Year as a new beginning without setting ourselves up for failure?

Make it easier (based on neuroscience)

Andrew Huberman came up with the term “limbic friction” to describe how our limbic system (which pulls us towards comfort) creates resistance to doing things that take discipline, things that aren’t fun when we do them. In this great podcast, he describes a different way to make resolutions, a system he developed based on neuroscience:

Pick 6 habits you want to change. 

For 21 days, try to do 4 of them every day (which means you can skip 2).

If you miss days or do less than 4 don’t try to make them up (or beat yourself up).

After 21 days, go on “autopilot” for 21 days to see which ones have “stuck”. No habit trackers, no long term failures, just a tiny experiment (thank you Anne-Laure Canff!) that you can repeat as you often as you want. 

Set New Year Destinations (instead of resolutions)

To move us away from the usual rigid “discipline” of New Year’s resolutions, Ryder Carroll suggests that we think of our goals as lighthouses, not rules. You still need to write them down and revisit them often, but only to see if you need to adjust your course, not to celebrate a win (or punish a failure).

“By all means, set specific goals. Build your brilliant lighthouses along the alluring shores of all the places you wish to explore. Just see them for what they are: concepts, ideas, mental landmarks we construct to prevent us from getting lost at sea as we make our way from where we are, to where we want to be. Like lighthouses, goals are only as good as what they allow you to see.”

Ryder Carroll

 

Ask the right questions

Kate Bowler, one of my favorite modern theologians, reminds us that “there is no cure for being human”… which means not only is perfection is “off the table” for all of us, how we usually approach New Year’s Resolutions is all messed up.

And yet—here we are again. on the edge of a new year, still wanting to grow. Still wanting to try. Still hoping, somehow, for change.

Kate bowler

She suggests that instead of “instead of asking “What should I do?“, we should ask a better, harder question: “Given the constraints of my life right now, what is one small choice that would make my days more humane?” And once you have the answer to that question, she wisely says to limit the answer to something you can do on your worst days… not a lofty goal that requires you to be at your best.

We don’t need resolutions that prove our strength. We need ones that respect our limits. Because the goal isn’t to become invincible. It’s to become someone who can keep going—tenderly, truthfully—inside a life that will always be unfinished.

There is no cure for being human.
But there is grace for being human, anyway.

kate bowler