Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy podcast. We're so glad that you're here with us today. We are releasing this episode on New Year's Eve. And so today we're going to be tackling a hot topic around this time of year, which is New Year's resolutions. But here's the thing, not everyone feels the same way about them. There are usually three types of people when it comes to setting resolutions. Those who hate them and want nothing to do with New Year's resolutions.
Those who like the idea, but really haven't locked them down or written them down. Maybe they have a couple of ideas in their mind. And those who love setting New Year's resolutions and probably already have their detailed plans and resolutions set. So we're going to quickly cover each of these areas and talk about why people feel this way. We're going to offer some practical suggestions for whichever category you fall into today.
And then we're going to offer some practical suggestions for whichever category you fall into. All right, let's jump into today's episode. And I think to start off thinking about if you hate New Year's resolutions, why is the reason? I think this is a camp that I used to fall into where I really hated New Year's resolutions. I thought they were dumb. I was like, if you want to change your life, start changing now.
Don't wait for the New Year's. So if you want to lose weight, why are you waiting till after Thanksgiving and after Christmas? You should start before Thanksgiving, because that's the time when you're more likely to overeat. And so what better time to get a jumpstart than trying to cut out the section that you're going to probably perform the worst at. And so my thought process was always, well, why wait until that new year starts? Just get it going now.
If you want to start something new, get after it now. There's not a time of year you have to wait to. And again, that sentiment is still true. But I also think that because this is something that a large number of people jump into, because people are trying to turn over a new leaf with the new year, that it's just something that people are thinking about more frequently.
And so I've definitely changed my mindset. I remember hearing somebody talking about New Year's resolutions and they said, you know, you shouldn't hate New Year's resolutions because it's the one time of the year when the majority of people are trying to improve themselves. And I stopped and I thought, wow, that's a good way to think about it. Like everybody or a large number of people are all working towards the goal of betterment of themselves and improving some aspect of their life.
So to all those haters out there, I think you could change your mindset on it. I don't think there's any reason to hate on it. And actually, you could benefit a lot from jumping on the bandwagon here a little bit. Right. For those of you who are in this category, the I'm not doing it, I hate New Year's resolutions. Maybe there's some other reasons that you're not thrilled about it.
Maybe you've tried setting up New Year's resolutions in the past and ended up disappointed or didn't reach your goals. Or maybe you see it as gimmicky or like Tim said you're a do-it-now person and so why wait till the new year some other reasons that maybe people hate the new year's resolution sometimes people feel pressured by social media maybe disappointment when those resolutions fail by mid-January or like Tim said simply believing that if you want to make a change you can
do it any time of the year without the hype? Why do it now? And I think all of those reasons are really valid. But like Tim said, he had heard that thought about this is a one time a year, everyone's kind of on board to change their life. And so why not go with that momentum and use that to your advantage and use that for your own personal growth? So if you do have this perspective, let's talk about some healthy ways to handle it.
And you might not want to label it as needed solutions, but you could still be open to growth and seeing this from maybe different perspectives. So three suggestions that we have. The first is, if you're in this camp, focus on continuous improvement, not just one big resolution. Maybe instead of deciding on January 1st, I'm going to do this perfectly. Think about one small shift at a time, whether it's weekly or monthly changes that you're going to look at.
So for example, if you want to improve communication in your marriage, Pick one communication technique, like eye statements or the love technique that we've talked about in the past. And you're going to practice that for a couple of weeks. You're not going to make a big deal of it, but you're just going to focus on that one area and make that, in a sense, your resolution, even though you don't have to label it as such. The next thing that's important is to celebrate year-round wins.
So if when you stop and you think about the goal and you're like, man, this is so huge and so gigantic and it feels almost impossible, you do want to set up small achievements to celebrate throughout the year where it's like, hey, I made progress for this week or I made progress for this month, as opposed to just hoping for the end result and hoping that you're just going to be able to keep that motivation all the way through to the end of the year. that's very difficult.
But if you set up little victories along the way, where you're like, oh, I achieved this milestone, or I achieved that milestone, or look at me, I'm getting closer to my end goal, that's very exciting. As opposed to, well, it'll only be successful if I reach my final end goal all the way at the end. The other thing, and this is very important too, is rejecting the all or nothing mindset.
If you're only thinking about, hey, you know what, like, I either am going to make this happen perfectly, and I'm going to get all the way to the end. Then what happens is if you're not successful in that, it's demotivational versus if you stop and you think, hey, you know what? Any progress towards my goal that I currently haven't already made is a great thing.
And that's a wonderful and exciting thing because that's also one thing that's important to know about change is that change is not a consistent pattern of progress towards your goals. You take two steps forward, one step back, two more steps forward, one step back. That's a common thing that people go through. And a lot of times too, what you're going to be experiencing when you're trying to reach a goal is you're going to find a lot of things that don't really work for you.
And I think this is also important to note is that when you're going through and you're trying to make some of these changes, you're like, man, I tried this and that didn't work. Okay, well, now I'm going to try this other thing over here. Oh, well, that didn't work. Keep trying new things until you find the one that works out for you. Oh, for sure. And I think we see this a lot with gym memberships, right?
People who are consistent and they go to the gym throughout the year, they really dread going at the beginning of the year. Oh yeah, because the gym is just going to be a slew of people there. It's going to be super busy. It's going to be a bunch of people there who don't know what they're doing. And then you're not going to be able to get the equipment that you want. And I think people who hate New Year's resolutions can use this as an example of why they hate it, right?
Because they see all these people who have signed up for gym memberships and mid-January or maybe early February, you see a lot of people fall off. And so I think part of it, too, is knowing yourself. I think we have the hope of, OK, I'm going to sign up for a gym membership. But if that doesn't fit into your lifestyle, like if you don't have the time carved out to go to the gym and you don't have a plan to do that, then just having the gym membership isn't going to make you healthy.
And so I can see how it can be frustrating. And so if you are a part of this group that does not like New Year's resolutions, just remember those three strategies to focus on continuous improvement.
Not necessarily one big resolution and you don't even have to call it a new year's resolution you can just set goals you want to celebrate your wins year round and you want to reject that all or nothing mindset and just start making changes throughout the year but just be really careful that you aren't so against new year's resolutions that you're sabotaging yourself and you're not allowing yourself to grow because you're so against this movement when in reality it's praiseworthy
to be able to set these goals and to use the momentum and the excitement of a new year to start fresh and to make progress and move in the direction of your goals. And so do you have to wait for the new year? Absolutely not. But this is a great time to start. And the key is really not letting cynicism or fear of failure or just your perspective on hating years resolution to stop you from growing in small ways throughout the year.
And so let's jump into the next crowd, which is the semi-interested crowd. These are people who have some goal in mind, but they haven't necessarily solidified anything. This is probably a large portion of the listeners. So the majority of people are going to be in this crowd where like, I want to improve something. But they haven't necessarily sat down and meticulously planned out everything that they want to do. I have this idea. I just want to be better.
And these are areas I might want to be better in. So we're going to talk a little bit about how to solidify your goals. And one of the really important things is writing your goals down. And the reason why is that research shows that if you write down your goals, it makes you 42% more likely to achieve them.
And so just think about that, taking that little bit of extra effort of writing it down and solidifying exactly what it is that you want to do, you're going to be 42% more likely to make it through to what you want to get through.
And when we're thinking about new year's resolutions and probably like 80 to 90 percent of people don't end up making it through their new year's resolutions but if you want to give yourself a boost up towards being one of those people who do achieve it you definitely want to sit down and write down your goals and one of the first things that you can do is just a brain dump where you just sit down with all your goals
you take five minutes and you write down all the things that you'd like to achieve personal relational financial get them out of your head and onto a piece of paper. Then what you want to do is you want to write down the short-term versus the long-term goals, fun versus serious goals. And then having those listed out can also help you prioritize what goals you really put a lot more effort into, or even some of your fun goals could be a reward for making milestones in more of your serious goals.
So the next thing you want to do is to use the SMART framework. And SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, relevant, and time-bound. So a lot of people in this group will have vague thoughts like, I should exercise more, or I want to read more books, but haven't really solidified a plan. So plugging this into that framework, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
So if you have the idea of, I should really read more, I'm thinking maybe I should read more. So to plug that in, you're going to be specific about it. What do you want to read more? Do you want to read more books? Do you want to read more magazines? Do audiobooks count toward that? Do you want to read more social media posts? Which probably not that last one, but that's why you have to get specific. What is it that you want to read more? And then measurable.
Okay, so I want to read 12 books this year. So at the end of the year, would you be able to measure that? Absolutely. And then is it achievable? Yes, that would be achievable. You might have to tweak that. And maybe for you, you can read really thick novels. or maybe you're listening to books on tape and so you can listen to a lot more because you can do it while you're cleaning. Or maybe you want to read physical books, but you don't necessarily have a whole lot of time.
So maybe pick shorter books, but books that are impactful and books that you want to read. And that can fall into relevant as well. Like you want to make sure that you pick books that matter to you, books that you're interested in, right? You're not going to just pick up a kid's picture book to be like, oh my gosh, I need to read a book this month, and it's the last day of the month, and so I'm going to read Corduroy, right?
You want to make sure that it's relevant to the goal that you're trying to set. And then time bound. So you said that you want to read 12 books in a year, so that would just mean by the end of the year, you have those 12 books read. And a great way to do that is just work backwards. Okay, you want to read 12 by the end of the year, which would mean that would be one book a month, right?
And you can kind of shift that around. But I would have check-ins throughout the year to make sure that you're on track. So one book a month really is a good, measurable, time-bound way to do it. And I'd say, too, you want to add in a little room for error. So if you want to read 12 books by the end of the year, and this is kind of how my mind works, I'd say, OK, then I'm going to try to read a book every three weeks.
So that if something comes up or I get too busy, like I'm trying to do it a little bit earlier so I have a little bit of play time in there so that I'm not rushing by the end of the year to try to get it done. So the next thing that you want to do, and this is important when you're setting your goals, is you want to tie your goals to a bigger purpose. So ask yourself, why do I want to do this? Maybe you want to heal your childhood trauma. We're good at helping out with that.
Maybe you want to improve your marriage or reduce anxiety. Focusing on the deeper why can help motivate you to actually follow through.
But if you just, again, think kind of more broadly and you're like oh I would like this well why would I like this oh I would like to read more books because I think that's a healthier form of entertainment than watching tv or scrolling social media or I want to expand my knowledge about a specific topic and so that I can improve the quality of the work that I'm doing but you want to make sure that you have a why to what is my purpose in doing
this as opposed to just saying like well this seems like the right thing to do or this maybe other people might admire me for doing this or it might be this is just something that I should do but again it's not something that you want to do if you don't have an idea of why your life would be improved if you were to take on this task you're not as likely to do it but again if it's more of a social construct thing where it's like oh I feel pressure because
I feel like other people would think I was good if I did this but I don't really care but I don't want them to look at me bad or I don't want them to think I'm dumb or something along those lines, that's not a very good motivational goal for you. It's got to be an internal like, ooh, this would do something for me if I did this. And the last strategy is to set up mini check-ins. And I kind of talked about this when I mentioned the SMART framework.
But instead of waiting until next December, you're going to plan monthly or quarterly reviews. And this really helps keep your goals top of mind and lets you pivot if something isn't working for you. And just to add on to what you said earlier, Tim, about writing them down, I wouldn't necessarily just write them down and stick them away in a drawer somewhere.
I would post it on your mirror or put it in a place that's visible so it does stay at the forefront of your mind and you're reminded of it when maybe that motivation is gone. So this camp is more of a balanced middle ground. You're able to acknowledge the motivation that kind of comes with a new year, but you're not necessarily going all in on January 1st with these unrealistic expectations.
But I would definitely encourage you to use the motivation of the new year and if you don't have your goals written down stop this recording right now and do these steps that we just mentioned so that you can narrow down and solidify your goals as soon as the new year begins or sooner than later. And now the last group that we're going to talk about this is the enthusiastic resolution setters.
Maybe you already have a color-coded spreadsheet of your goals or a vision board pinned to the wall or a bullet journal with habit trackers ready to go. Which side note, Tim gave me one of those for Christmas so I'm super excited to use that. But we applaud that enthusiasm and we want to encourage you to keep that going because this motivation at the start of the new year can be a fantastic catalyst to reaching your goals and really changing your life in a lot of different areas, right?
Personal growth, healing trauma, enhancing relationships. But there are a few pitfalls to watch out for if you're in this camp. So the first one is to avoid overstacking your goals. If you set 15 different goals, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. I'm going to learn a language, write a book, run a marathon, fix my marriage. I'm going to start a business. Those are all such great things and it makes me excited and motivated to hear them. But honestly, there's a big chance that you might burn out.
So try to pick just two or three main goals that really align with what you want. I know a lot of people will pick a word for the year and that can also help kind of realign and refocus what you're going to be working on that year. But don't overstock those goals because sometimes that positivity can be toxic positivity and can cause you to crash and burn. And it kind of goes into that all or nothing mindset. And I think, too, you may think like, oh, I have all these things that I want to do.
But one of the things to also know about our goals is that a lot of times we can sprint at the beginning and it feels pretty easy. But then where people fall off is when you get into the more difficult minutiae of the task that you're doing. And those parts are not so fun. And what happens a lot of times if you have those 15 activities, what you're doing is you're juggling between the fun or the easier portions. And then when it comes up to the hard portion, then it's like,
ooh, now I want to avoid or I don't want to do it. And so if you're one of those people and you're like, oh, I think I could do 15. Well, try to focus on the three like Ruth was saying. And then if you can knock those out within the first three months of the year, fine. Tack on another three and start hammering away at those. But remember that a lot of the goals we're probably going to be setting are going to be marathon type activities.
Not something where it's like, oh, I could just do this real quick. It's, hey, I got to be consistent. I got to put in effort. Because if it didn't require that, why are we really setting this up as a New Year's resolution? Because it's something that we probably easily could have done before. This is something generally that's going to take time and dedicated effort to be successful achieving the goal.
And the next thing, and I think I said this a little bit earlier, but you want to make sure that you have built in flexibility and grace into this. We're not seeking perfection. We're seeking a general trend of improvement, a general trend of moving towards that goal. Again, we do want to set timelines and things like that to try to do our best to achieve that goal.
But just because we might miss a milestone or we don't hit the specific time frame right now doesn't mean we throw it all out right away. Because lots of things can happen. So there might be emergencies or it might be struggling with motivation or there might just be a very busy season that comes up that makes it very difficult to do it.
And one of the things to recognize is that that is a part of life and a part of achieving your goal is not letting those setbacks cause you to give up hope and then just stop your progress, especially for the people who are highly motivated and they have all this stuff planned out already, right? One of the things you have to plan into your plan is for your plan not to go exactly how you plan.
And that you're going to have to reevaluate and adjust along the way in order to keep your nose to the grindstone and then to get more and more mileage out of what your new year's resolution is. The next one is to celebrate small wins consistently. So instead of waiting until you fully accomplish the goal, break it into milestones throughout the year. Which is kind of what we talked about with the other camp, right? Setting up mini check-ins.
But as you set up these mini check-ins and milestones, then celebrate it as well. And the last thing is to enlist accountability. So share your goals with someone that you trust. See if maybe they want to read 12 books a year with you. and see if maybe they have similar goals in their marriage or in their life that you can kind of check in with each other. And another thing that kind of falls under this area of accountability is to get help.
Marriage therapy, coaching sessions, EMDR, all that can help keep you on track for your personal growth or your relationship-focused goals. Because it's a natural built-in accountability that if you know you're going to meet with them next week, you're trying to get things done before then. And then they check in with you. And then you go back and you implement the things that you learned. And so if you are in this camp, the key is harnessing all of your excitement.
All of your color-coded plans, your written-out goals, without letting perfectionism create that anxiety and not being overly rigid. Because if you are, you risk feeling like a failure if real life derails your perfect plan. So think of your resolutions as a path you're on to personal growth and getting closer to your goals, but not this all or nothing where you'll fail if everything isn't perfect by the year's end.
So those are the three different viewpoints you may be holding for your New Year's resolution. Whether you like to avoid them altogether, or you have ideas but haven't nailed them down yet, or you thrive on planning them out. One of the things that we do want to encourage you is that we do think that New Year's resolutions are a good thing. And again, if you're one of those people who hates them, believe me, I've been in your camp before, but my thinking has kind of come around to this.
I do think that setting New Year's resolutions and goals, they are a worthwhile activity. I would urge you to reconsider and give it a shot this year, and try to follow the plans we've outlined to try to make sure that you can be the most successful that you can this year. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs.
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