This week we are talking about HOPE and New Years Resolutions. What does one have to do with the other? Well, I don’t know about you, but each new year holds hope for me. Hope for better things, for renewed commitment to goals and excitement for the possibilities. I think its important to use that hope to effect change in your life. Not just hope others will change things for you. Happiness is an adventure. When we dare to set and achieve goals we have things to celebrate on this journey.
Resources I referenced this week:
Matt Cutts TED Talk – 30 Day Challenge
Episode 3 of The Happier You –Celebrate The Small WinsJohn Dooer TED Talk – Why The Secret To Success Is Setting The Right GoalsDan Harris’s Book – 10% Happier
Episode Transcript:
Hi, happy people, and welcome back. This week we’re talking about hope and new year’s resolutions. And what do they have in Common?
I love the hope that comes with the new year with the new calendar and the fresh start.
I think hope is important in many ways. And I think there’s two kinds of hope or at least that’s the way I look at it. So the one kind of hope is what I call passive hope, where I hope that something happens, but I don’t have any control over it. For example, I hope that the experts come up with a vaccine and we get back to seeing friends and family and traveling safely throughout the world like we did before. Or maybe you hope to win the lottery and think that will solve all your problems. There’s also just hoping that a friend or family members surgery goes well.
Although these kinds of hope are important, we don’t actually have any real control over the outcome.
The second kind of hope I think there is, is what I look at as active hope. This is where I personally believe we have influence over the outcome and where the things we do can make a difference. For an example, one of the goals I had in 2020 was figuring out ways to be happier.
Being happier is one of those things I was hoping for.
And for which I truly believe I have influence over the outcome. That’s an example of active hope.
I really love Dan Harris’s book called 10% happier. And when someone asked him why he chose 10%, he said that’s because anybody can wrap their brain around the concept and believe that 10% is achievable.
I think that achieving our goals makes us happier.
I think setting a goal and challenging yourself brings you happiness, but the trick is setting a goal that you believe is attainable and achievable for you. Otherwise we just lose hope.
Heading into this new year, I was discussing this whole concept with my family. And we were talking about how, in fact years ago we gave up on new year’s resolutions. We just had so many years of passive hope, like starting a goal, but not really breaking it down and figuring out how we were going to get there.
So we gave up on them because we got discouraged or we lost hope.
And I’m sure there’s some of you out there who feel the same way. That by not setting a goal, you’re protecting yourself from disappointment. Because if you don’t have goals and expectations, then you can’t be disappointed if nothing good happens.
This year I want to challenge you to think about that differently.The act of setting a goal, breaking it down into smaller steps and figuring out how to get there can be empowering and can bring you more happiness.
So, as we were discussing this around the dinner table, I remembered picking up my son from baseball one day and the coach kept going. “Come on, man, give me your full swing. Your full swing.” Alex just kept hitting the ball, but the coach kept asking for more, for his real swing. Alex didn’t understand he was hitting the ball.
He didn’t understand what the coach was looking for.
When Alex left the cages and headed out for the night, I stopped and asked him for one of his batting gloves. And I said, “I want to show you something to see if I can help you understand what the coach was asking for.” And so I took his baseball glove and I set it just in front of him. And I said, “Alex, I want you to jump over the baseball glove.”
And so he jumped over it and looked at me like, yeah. Okay. That was easy.
And then I said, “Great. Now go back to the starting spot.” And I set the baseball glove about four feet in front of him. And I said, “Alex, now I want you to jump over the baseball glove.” This took a little more effort. He had to bend his knees and pump his arms. He did a little bit of a warmup he put more effort in and managed to jump over the baseball glove at about four feet.
Again, I said, “Great job. Now, head back to the starting spot.” And I set the glove about six to seven feet in front of him. And I said, “Okay, Alex, now I want you to give it your best. I want you to jump over this glove.” And he looked at me and said, “Mom, I can’t jump that far.” And I said,
“It’s okay. I just want you to give it your best shot. See how far you can get, but aim for it. I think you can do it.”
So he went for it and you know, same thing. Did his warm up, pumped his arms, bent his legs, put a lot of effort into it and gave it his best shot. Before he moved I said, “Okay, now, Alex, you didn’t make the seven to eight feet, but I want you to look behind you and see, did you make it further than when I sat the ball glove at about four feet?” And he had.
And I said, “That’s the point the coach was making Alex. You were giving him a good enough swing for the batting cages. You have great eye-hand coordination and you can hit the ball in those batting cages. No problem. But what the coach wanted you to practice was your real swing. The swing that you would use when the bases are loaded and you’re trying to get as many RBI’s (runs batted in) as you can, at your batting turn.”
“When you’re trying to get as many runs batted in, as you can, you’re aiming to hit that ball over the fence and your swing has everything in it. And that’s what the coach was asking you to practice. He wanted you in those batting cages to give it your all. He wanted that swing.
Then when you hit that ball, even if you don’t make it over the fence, you’re going further than just swinging at the ball because you’ve given it your all.”
I’d been at a conference earlier in 2020, and that lesson was shared. And I found it very interesting because I realized that sometimes I’m one of those people who protects herself from really big goals. Because, I don’t actually think I’m going to make that goal. And so I just refuse to set it. But I also realized, that if I look back through my life, I can see times where I’ve set a goal that I believe is attainable.
It’s scary, but attainable. When I break it down, I can figure out how to get there.
And that’s what I want to encourage you to do this year is figure out a goal and break it down. I don’t want you to give up hope on your new year’s goals or your new year’s resolutions. I simply want you to be excited and embrace the hope and set goals for yourself.
You need to believe that they’re attainable, but that doesn’t mean they’re attainable easily.
It just means that it’s something you think you can push yourself to do if you work at it and you break down your goal, you can get there.
In a previous episode, I told you that our family had given up on new year’s resolutions years ago. And we had settled into our 30 day challenge. I love my 30 day challenges, and I think we talked about it back in Celebrating The Small Wins episode, back in April. Where I told you some years we make until June, which feels like a really successful year, and some years we only make it ’til about mid February, a little less successful.
Looking back, I realized that our 30 day challenges were good and they were small attainable bite-sized chunks that we could celebrate the win at the end of the month. But the problem was, once we hit June, we’d run out of 30 day goals to set for ourselves. Or we didn’t have an overall goal that kept us moving forward.
We didn’t know what to focus on.
A short while ago, we listened to a Ted talk by a gentleman named John Dooer and he talked about objectives and key results. OKR’s. The objectives are overall goals of what you want to achieve. So they are your WHAT. Like being fit or being a great parent to your children. These are your objectives.
The key results are how you get there and how you measure success.
So the key results need to be simple to measure, like running at least 20 minutes, three times a week. Or putting your phone away when you help the kids do homework. By having an overall objective or a big goal, that’s what keeps you going. But then to figure out how you’re going to get there, that’s the key results. How am I going to measure my success towards that goal?
So, for example, if somebody says what’s your new year’s resolution, my new year’s resolution is to run a 10 mile. But right now my goal, my 30 day challenge is to run three times a week or whatever that breakdown goal is for you.
So it’s about having a goal, but also about breaking it down into bite sized chunks and creating the habits that support that goal. That’s just a suggestion that you could use the 30 day challenge to help you get to your overarching goal.
Because I think happiness comes in celebrating all those small wins towards the big goal, that’s what I’m encouraging you to do.
So think about something that you really want in 2021. Something that you feel passionate about so that if you start to waiver on, have trouble keeping up with your challenges, there’s something that really drives you to keep you going when you maybe hit roadblocks or speed bumps in June or July.
Now if you want some great motivation, this 30 day challenge concept originally came to us when we gave up on the new year’s resolutions years ago. So, you know, my husband is a huge TED talk fan and he found a Ted talk by this guy named Matt Cutts. And it was about a 30 day challenge concept that he had implemented in his life.
Basically, he says, you can do anything for 30 days.
And so we started those 30 day challenges instead of our new year’s resolutions. It’s only about four minutes long and it’s a really great motivational video. I’ll put the link into the show notes.
What I realized this year is not only do I need my 30 day challenges, but I also need an objective, an overall goal. I need my big goal and my key results. And then I can break those key results down into behaviors that I can implement as my 30 day challenges.
That was my big “aha” moment heading into 2021.
And I’m excited. I’m hopeful because I have this new knowledge and I’m excited to put it to the test and see how it works. I have some of these new beliefs and skills that I’ve built on in 2020, and I’m going to turn around and do even more in 2021.
And I’m excited about that, because I have hope!
So that’s my challenge for you this week. I’m challenging you to let yourself be hopeful. Take the time to figure out something that really excites you and something that you want. Something that you’re hopeful for, and then turn it into a new year’s goal or a new year’s resolution. However you want to look at it.
Remember having an active hope is powerful, but as we talked about back in episode 3, Celebrating The Small Wins, you have to figure out the behaviors that are going to get you there. And that for me is those 30 day challenges.
So when you’re doing this, remember the serenity prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
This week’s quote is from Robert H Schuller and he says,
“Let your hopes not your hurts, shape your future.”
Thank you so much for being on this journey with me this year. Having you as part of this community has been a huge motivator for me to keep going and to keep trying to find my happier.
I know it’s worked for me and I really hope it’s worked for you as well. I’m excited about moving forward together in 2021. So set your goals, grab onto hope, and have a happy new year. And I will talk to you again in 2021.