INTENTION
Forget ambitious resolutions and opt for a single word instead, this year – it has more power and possibility, writes Yasmina Floyer
There’s nothing I love more than the promise held in a brand-new notebook; the infinite possibilities yawning before me in a multitude of blank pages. And the start of a new year is no different. For years I would spend the languid days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve conjuring visions of a future self, allowing my mind to be filled with scenarios I wanted to find myself in during the coming months. Then I would commit these visions to action in a list of resolutions. The only problem was that I never actually achieved anything. The resolutions outlined my desires: to learn another language; to get up early to exercise; to write a book… but year after year, this list became just a greatest hits of items I repeatedly failed to accomplish. Rather than being a motivating force, my resolutions were just another thing I felt I was failing at, and I would find myself forgetting about them entirely come Easter. By the time the following New Year’s Eve rolled round, I would mindlessly recycle the previous year’s resolutions, whilst being reminded of what I hadn’t done – not exactly the mindset I wanted to head into a fresh year with.
I’m not the only one who struggles to stick to New Year’s resolutions. Health psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Sula Windgassen explains that many factors can influence how hard we find making a change to our behaviour. ‘New Year is a funny period, which we consider to be a new slate; a chance to do things we ought to have been doing all along but haven’t quite managed to. We may assume this “clean slate” perception is enough to adopt the changes we wish to make, but the reality is that all the barriers to our resolutions that were there before, may well still exist.’
These may be practical barriers, or psychological ones, such as having an all-or-nothing approach to things. I’m certainly guilty of giving up on something when I haven’t executed it to perfect standards or kept up consistency, a thought process that resonates with Dr Windgassen: ‘The tendency to want to give something 100 per cent, otherwise we consider it not good enough, is an extremely demotivating mindset. When you don’t meet that standard, you feel like you’ve failed, and this comes with a negative emotional experience, which reinforces your aversion rather than your motivation to do it. This is one of the biggest reasons new habits die hard.’
A few years ago, a friend suggested I ditch my rigid list of goals in favour of a practice she was introduced to by writer Susannah Conway, of adopting a single word that represents what you wish to foc
