Steve Caswell
Broker
Realty Executives of Sudbury Ltd.
As we head into the final weekend of the year, and even the decade, I can feel the communal anxiety starting to kick in. No, it’s not the holiday overspending and added credit card debt that people are worried about. It’s not the extra five pounds they’ve gained over the holiday season. It’s not the feeling that the holiday is soon over and it’ll be back to the grind with work. But the anxiety is certainly there and it’s self-created……
I’m talking about the infamous act of creating a New Year’s Resolution.
Who was this cruel, demented person that started this long standing tradition of having to convince yourself that at least one piece of your life requires you to take a complete 180 and turn your life around? Bad enough that you’re supposed to shine a light on what you’re doing wrong, you’ve also got to a create a brand new daily ritual that must be started when the ball drops and the clock strikes midnight – often when we’re inebriated with a ridiculous hat on and blowing some form of party horn from the dollar store.
Add to that the profound evidence that we often create absurd and unrealistic resolutions pretty much sentences us to failure. Quitting smoking is far from “flicking a switch” easy, going to the gym every day takes tons of determination and then there's the proverbial "I'm going on a strict diet" falsehood we impose on ourselves. And we force these changes on ourselves cause of tradition at a time when we’re eating gigantic holiday suppers, having that extra bit of dessert, pouring ourselves the proverbial “ok, one more” and all the while skipping our daily work and workout routines “because it’s the holidays”.
Wikipedia states that 88% of people fail and only 52% are confident of their success at the onset. Think about that – 48 out of a 100 of us know before we even start that we’re not going to follow through. And only 12 out of that 100 are actually going to succeed. If you were asked to change your life and you only had a 12% of it working out, would you do it?
Yet, here we are, forcing these undeserved and, more than likely, unachievable life altering changes upon ourselves in hopes we “really turn our lives around” because we’re flipping a calendar page.
I hate to break it to ya but January 1st, 2020, is just another day in our lives. A lot of us will be suffering from the prior night’s shenanigans and we’ll order pizza while watching a movie marathon on TV. So, our resolutions become “ok, I’m going to start tomorrow!”. More often than not, Day 1 has always been a complete misfire for me in terms of my resolution.
But, for those of you that have followed that same path of creating a lofty goal that we’re “going to stick to in the New Year” only to feel brutal about ourselves by February, or even mid/early January sometimes, it’s time to stop the cycle of setting ourselves up for this self-deprecation. And I believe I've found a way to save us all the anxiety and guarantee we can’t fail!
Sure, some of you are saying “just don’t make a resolution” and that, of course, would work. Lot’s of people sing the tagline “my New Year’s Resolution this year is no more resolutions!” But I think we can do better. And that’s my New Year’s Resolution moving forward.
My resolution is going to be better today than I was yesterday and I’m going to treat every day throughout the year as January 1st. Every morning I’m going to wake up and think about how I did yesterday and what I can do today to be better, even if it’s just a little. Maybe it’s as simple as hiking a little higher up the mountain than yesterday, maybe it’s finishing that little project I put aside or maybe it’s just spending a few minutes longer with someone who wants to talk instead of thinking I need to be somewhere else.
Regardless, I can’t fail. I don’t have to follow through on something for 366 days this year (Leap Year!) and then feel as though I somehow failed cause I only made it 40 days. Sure, there will be days I look back on and say, “I don’t think I was better than the day before”, but now I get to reset and only focus on being better than yesterday.
The term Resolution is described as being a “firm decision to do or not to do something”. Firm is the part that creates the anxiety. Firm is the piece that causes such high failure rates in New Year’s Resolution attempters. Firm leaves no margin of error and no objectivity. Firm only returns a value of pass or fail.
So, maybe what I have is not a ‘resolution”, per se, but rather just a feeling of trying to do better no matter what way my life takes me while leaving the pass or fail mentality on the curb. All I have to do is beat yesterday’s performance and, if I don’t, I get another chance tomorrow to try and be better than I will be today.
Don’t paint yourself into a corner for 2020 with some wildly unattainable measure against yourself. Leave the pressure you’re considering putting on yourself in the last decade and the New Years’ of past. Life sometimes can be tough enough and none of us need to place stress, through some nonsensical tradtion, on a portion of our lives that firmly defines whether we pass or fail.
Instead, just make today a great day by trying to be a little better than you were yesterday. And we'll work on being better than today when we wake up tomorrow.
The Caswell Team hopes you are having a great holiday season and look forward to helping you make your 2020 even better. Never hestitate to contact us at caswellteam@realtyexecutives.com to see how we can help for all your real estate needs. You can always start your MLS™ search by clicking here, don't forget to check out all our other informative and entertaining blog topics here or just browse our site for tons of great info on buying and selling in Greater Sudbury and surrounding areas.
Contributed by:
Steve Caswell
Cell - 705.561.8767
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other salespersons, staff or affiliates of Realty Executives of Sudbury LTD. Brokerage, Realty Executives International, the Sudbury Real Estate Board, Ontario Real Estate Association, Canadian Real Estate Association or any of their subsidiaries. For any concerns pertaining to the content herein, please contact us immediately at caswellteam@realtyexecutives.com.
