New year, new you….yeah right.
Happy New Year! Having said that, is there a time period of when we stop starting conversations or emails with that phrase? It’s like the togs, togs, togs, undies commercial (see link here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4MGzwQexQ).
I’ve been very lax with posts, but I did warn subscribers that I wouldn’t spam people with lots of email notifications. I said maybe once a month and it has been two and a half. It was Christmas holidays so does that count or am I just justifying being a slacker?
Actually though, that is the basis of this months blog. Living up to what we say we’re going to do when it comes to making changes in ourselves. New Year’s is a time of making drunk proclamations of going to the gym 4 times a week, losing a gadzillion pounds, and walking everyday until your feet bleed…or some such.
I subscribe to the Mary Poppins theory that New Year’s resolutions are like “pie crust promises - easily made and easily broken”. Let’s face it the spoon full of sugar girl had it all going on and was a wise woman. Well except for the hat…it was pretty bad.
While we need to take stock each year and reflect on what we’ve done or not done, sweeping changes are usually not sustainable in the long term. Instead, do an inventory of who you are as a practitioner and identify the areas where you want to get better and then prioritise those. Don’t work on them all at once. Make small incremental changes that foster success and commit to doing that every three months when you review your goals with your supervisor. (You do have a goal review with your supervisor right? Right?)
So instead of saying that you’re going to do self care four times a week and find that you only carved out enough time in your busy schedule to do that the first week, why not make a yearly list of all the things you usually do for self care and all the stuff you want to try. Then commit to trying at least two of those new things throughout the year. Not only will you know then if those two things are something that helped and you can add it to your kete, but you will have achieved a goal and can add another one of your priorities. The dopamine hit will be amazing and you can get a little glow of smugness for a bit. Or overachieve and try more things!
The other part of this goal setting is being brave enough to look at where you feel you need to do some work. Often we will state what it is, state what we need to change and then set a goal that seems to address this. The hard part is the part that is missing in that process. It’s the why. Why are we not living up to our or someone else’s expectation? Should we be? What resistance is there that has stopped us from achieving it already? It requires more than just naming it. It’s a little deeper dive in understanding who we are, how we learn, how we sabotage ourselves and figuring out a goal that works with who we are. There is absolutely no sense in working against your nature or your established personality traits. It will set you up for failure and make you miserable. You wouldn’t ask a fish to drive a car right? Someone who is more pragmatic and “staunch” in their personality will probably struggle with the more emotional side of working with sexual harm for example. They can learn the skills but it will take a lot of time to become comfortable with the vulnerability that gets expressed on both sides. So if your goal is to work with survivors, then there needs to be extra work done first in order to make that goal a reality (i.e., some of your own work about vulnerability, empathy, empowerment, dealing with the frustration of slow progress, prejudice/bias/myths around sexual harm etc. )
We’re human. Very few people can honestly say that we don’t want to change something about ourselves or our practice. Someday I’d like to meet a person who can just so I can figure out how the hell they did it.
We know what we want to change, but we seldom dig down deep enough to understand why we want to change, the barriers that are stopping us and have an honest look at the personal effort it will take to achieve it. It’s definitely worthwhile to make changes - not only on a personal level but also on a practice level. Improving is always worthwhile. We just have to be realistic in making a shiny new improved 2.0 (or in my case 15.6) version of ourselves.
I’d be interested in hearing from you about what goals you might be working towards this year and if this has helped you change your process of setting them at all.
