January the 3rd already – how do you feel about New Year goal setting?

I’ve been trying to write a post for three days, now, about New Year being a traditional time to evaluate the past year and plan for the coming one. (Did you know January’s named after Janus, the Roman god of gateways, who has a double-faced head so he can look backwards and forwards?)

I wanted to write about how the world and his dog will be prompting us to evaluate our lives and set SMART goals to move us towards the life of our dreams, possibly with the help of a 10-week online course, discounted for a limited period only, for the bargain price of $397. But how, though I love buying calendars and diaries and colourful felt pens and page markers and setting everything up with hope in my heart, I myself find ‘keeping to the programme’ difficult for more than a couple of days. Largely from boredom, or pig-headedness (I really hate those shoulds!), or, perhaps, because of an as-yet undiagnosed neurodiversity prevalent in the family.

I started to write, and even crafted some clever/borderline-humorous paragraphs murdering the metaphor of life as a journey, involving maps and diversions and accidentally ending up in Milan (crime capital of Italy, apparently) when you assume all roads lead to Rome. And worked in something about yellow brick roads and floating on a wardrobe door in the Atlantic, in reference to a couple of films watched over Christmas with Offspring 1 and included to make her laugh.

But at 7:00 pm last night, with 1855 words of a 500-word post written, I knew the piece wasn’t working, over-stuffed with things it didn’t need, written largely for my own pleasure (just like, as I recently told my night-class, JRR Tolkien had done with LotR), and failing the question I also said they should ask about everything they write, ‘so, my reader should spend precious time reading this because … ?’

1855 words in and it didn’t work, which is more than a little disappointing since I’d set myself a target of publishing a 500-word blog about something, somewhere, for every day in January, and had failed already, two days in.

So I closed my lap top and binge-watched The Good Wife instead.

But I woke up this morning cross about it, because I did have something important I wanted to say about this whole self-improvement/goal setting malarkey; something from my own experiences that I believe readers might find worth giving up a little precious time to read. So here it is, and in considerably less than 1855 words:

You are enough. Just as you are, you are enough. Life is hard and our purpose on this planet is to get through each day of it in one piece. So every day you’ve managed this, you’re a success.

But if you do decide you want to change an aspect of your life, self-knowledge is useful for helping decide on direction. Here are a couple of tools I’ve found useful and returned to a number of times in my life:

The Myers-Briggs personality test (free)
A personal values and interests activity (free)

The SMART goal system may well work for some people, though research shows not actually for many. If you do want to follow a system to keep you motivated for improvement, find or design one that suits what you know about your strengths and personality, not something counter-intuitive that will set you up to fail. See, for instance, this story of a young Star Wars fan who wanted to be George Lucas’s accountant (first 3 mins of an interesting but rather long video).

Know that whatever systems you follow and however well-intentioned you are, you will take wrong-turns in life and make mistakes. Do not feel shame about this.

The good news is that no experience in life is wasted and, in fact, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. I know myself that it’s as useful to discover what is wrong for us (in a work sense) as what is right, and we pick up new skills and experience either way. It takes bravery to move on from a role you know isn’t right for you, but there are ways to make it less daunting, and as a therapist once said to me, ‘as long as the general trend is upward, it’s all good.’

And finally, don’t trust Janus – he’s two faced and what can he know about life today when he’s been dead for hundreds of years? (If, indeed, he was ever alive). January is a dark, cold month in the depths of winter and, most probably, not the optimal time to make major life changes. Why not wait till spring, when there’s more light in the sky to boost our serotonin levels and our body’s more predisposed to helping us make change?

In the meantime, be kind to yourself, keep warm and keep going, one day at a time. Maybe snuggle under a blanket on the sofa, binge-watching The Good Wife.

Or, even, keep an eye on my website, where I’m thinking of selling a 10-week online course on how to murder travel metaphors, discounted for a limited period to the bargain price of $397 …