One of my favorite secular holidays has always been New Year’s Eve. There’s something exciting and invigorating about having that clean slate and turning over a new leaf.
Tonight begins one of my favorite religious holidays, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s a holiday with some beautiful traditions for the new year, such as eating apples dipped in honey, which symbolizes the sweetness of the new year. The 10 days following Rosh Hashanah are filled with introspection. Traditionally, one goes to a body of flowing water and symbolically casts off the areas in which he has “missed the mark.” He turns from his old ways and resolves to do better.
A wonderful thing about resolutions is we don’t need a holiday to set them. Regardless of religious persuasion, you can, in this moment, decide that you will become a different person, accomplish something great, stop an unwanted habit, create a new practice.
October 1 also begins the final quarter of the year. Think back to the beginning of the year:
Did you set any resolutions?
How many of them did you accomplish?
What areas need some improvement?
Did you fail at keeping a resolution and just let it rest at that?
Now take a look at what can be accomplished in three months. You could:
Change your diet in some measurable way. How about giving up red meat—or all meat? Or stop drinking soda.
Decide to do a little exercise regularly. It’s not necessary to make any great proclamations. Simply give yourself an easily achievable goal, say, 20 minutes of cardio four times a week. In fact, if you haven’t been exercising, here’s a trick that’s worked for me: Tell yourself that’s all you’re allowed to do for the first month. This will help to avoid throwing yourself into exercise with such passion that you burn out before you’ve made it a regular practice. Look at it as a lifestyle change, and one that needs to be eased into.
Start an emergency savings plan. Keep it a realistic amount. Set up an auto-draft of your paycheck so you don’t even have to think about it.
Recommit to living green. This is one of mine. I have a box in my office now gathering used office paper. I think I’ve found some recycling bins that will fit in the small laundry room I have. I’m reassessing my consumption in many different areas and trying to see if I can eliminate things or find more environmentally-friendly alternatives.
Quit thinking about writing, and just start writing. I am writing on a regular basis, but I have some goals I’ve set for the new year. They’re concrete, achievable, and exciting. Which leads me to my next point…
Start getting up early. You’ve talked about it. You’re convinced of the benefits of it. But you’ve yet to make this habit yours. Maybe you’ve not had a sleep strategy that has worked. You could decide today that you will start getting decent sleep as well as get up early. Then set about creating new routines to make it happen. Make sure you have some exciting goals that will make you want to get up early.
Keep a neat and clean home. Imagine the peace of mind you’ll gain from having an organized home. What would be the payoff? Perhaps you would have more energy if you didn’t feel that nagging tug every time you saw the pile of papers in your office. Maybe you would be more sociable if you knew you could have friends over with little notice.
Start meditating. Consider a simple practice of just 10 minutes every morning or evening sitting still and focusing on your breathing. You can find 10 minutes a day, right?
Read regularly. When was the last time you read a book for pleasure? Pick a time, maybe 30 minutes before bed, and make that your daily reading time. Then consider a reading strategy that will shake things up for the new year. If you typically only read nonfiction, consider making a resolution to read at least 26 fiction books over the next year. Start at the beginning of the alphabet, and choose an author whose last name begins with that letter. That’ll keep you challenged and help you discover new authors.
Learn a new hobby. A friend of mine regularly went to a local guitar shop to watch the craftsman create guitars. He helped in whatever ways he could, eventually learning enough that he was also building his own beautiful guitars. In addition to his day job, he’s now picked up a hobby that is actually paying him money. What hobby interests you? In three months you could learn to knit, take up bowling, start a running program, join a yoga class, participate in a hiking club, or learn to preserve fresh fruits and vegetables you purchase at the farmer’s market. What excites you? What would you like to make some time for?
Hopefully this list started you thinking of what you can do in just three months. You can choose to begin today practicing something that will forever change your life!
And if there’s any hesitation left in you, consider this: When New Year’s resolution time arrives December 30, would you rather be able to say that you are already a nonsmoker, an exerciser, a reader, a writer, a hobbyist, a Nanowrimo winner, a healthy cook—or would you like to be right where you are today?
Photo courtesy of Woodleywonderworks.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 am
Hi Liora. Saw your posts on Zenhabits, decided to check your site out. Some interesting stuff here, I like it. Particularly liked the october 1 post’s theme: I needed to be reminded I still have 4Q08 to play with and get something done. So I wrote out a draft of what my goals were at the start, and where I’m at with them. Will sleep on it and tomorrow check out what I’ll do for the remainder of the year.
Then I looked back at your earlier stuff, and saw the post about
“I’ve always believed that maybe I was missing some ingredient that separated myself from the wildly successful. What if maybe I’ve been wrong? We have all been born the same way. We eat, sleep, work, and have the same 24 hours a day. Don’t I have every ingredient necessary to be wildly successful, too?”
This reminded me of my mantra for losing weight a few years back. It was “Ordinary people can do this, and since I’m at least an ordinary person, I can do this too!”. Something I’d used previously, and which I’d arrived at by a similar Q&A with myself, as you describe in your post. And for me, this mantra (when I remember to use it) helps take a lot of effort out of things. It means what I’m trying to do isn’t something super hard, requiring a super-heroic effort, it is just something withing the bounds of ordinary human effort that may be hard, but *possible*. That doesn’t mean it is easy, but it does provide faith that I’m trying to do something that is reasonably, feasibly, possible. And that if I do all the right things, I’ll succeed. Having that belief, all the way down to your core, makes things a lot easier, I’ve found.
The other thing that helped was not worrying too much about time frame. I accepted that it could take time. The intent was for it to be a permanent life change, so it didn’t matter if it took 6 months or a year. As it was, it took about 2 months for habit change to kick in enough to yield a result, but after that I lost 16 kg, over 12 months.
…unfortunately, that lasted 2.5 only years, and over the last year or so I’ve gained 10 kg back (but, that means I’m *still* 6kg down on what I was). And, I know why I’ve slipped, and have some ideas about how to get back on track. Particularly after reading all the good stuff from Zenhabits.net, and your recent posts.
Hope your 4th Quarter ‘08 goes well for you.
Ciao.
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Hi Alistair,
Thanks so much for taking a look. Really three months is quite a bit of time. It’s enough to make a huge and lasting life change even from a small new habit. I like your mantra. :) It’s kind of like the thought that we all have to brush our teeth and do other things during the day. Despite our differences, we have much in common. I get this idea sometimes that if we could get up close to some of the people we imagine are great, we’d either be very impressed or very dismayed. In the end, they are people, perhaps ones who have just focused better than most.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Agree totally. A member of my circle of friends from 10+ years ago moved away to follow his writing career. He has done well, enough to make it his day job. He was in town last Friday 3rd october, and caught up with those of us who are still around and still regularly get together. It was good. We’ve all caught up maybe 3-4 times in the last 10 years, and this was not just fun, but also a reminder that its worth making the effort to make such things happen. And it was a reminder that successful tho’ he is as a writer, he is still just the same person he always was. And he got where he is by being focussed on his goals, and working hard, as well as being talented.
As can the rest of us. Especially with how to advice from blogs like yours and zenhabits.
Ciao.