We have entered 2022. The season for New Year’s resolution-making in the U.S. has dawned with the spread of another COVID-19 variant, omicron. After two years of navigating an unbelievable pandemic with wave crashing into wave of infection and change upon change to how we do life, resolving anything right now seems like tempting the fates or universe. How is anyone supposed to set goals when what we can expect more than anything else this year is unpredictability?
I don’t have a good answer. Setting a goal you care about when you know something outside your control may intervene and make reaching your goal impossible is hard. It takes audacity and flexibility—two practices that may be in short supply for many of us at this point in the pandemic. It may involve a willingness to grieve—a work that is deep, raw, and draining.
I’ve done my share of goal setting with varying results, like a lot of people. I’ve run into various tips about making those goals more reachable, like the SMART acronym (here’s a guide from the University of California on this) and productivity recommendations for specific numbers of major and minor tasks to assign yourself (like the “1-3-5 rule” as described in this article at The Muse). I’ve tried an array of schedules and methods for striving to do what I want to accomplish.
What I haven’t encountered in these logistical how-tos about goals, though, is an invitation to consider this question:
Who do I want to be, and what kind of relationship do I want to have with myself, in setting, aiming at, and either reaching or not reaching this goal?
This question has never even crossed my mind before now. Typically when I set a goal, it doesn’t occur to me to think carefully about how I am going to treat myself in the goal-striving process. I tend to focus just on the work, resources, and discipline required.
This past year, however, has pushed me to reevaluate how I relate to myself. My default setting is self-criticism, so when I go after a goal without checking that habit, I can be my own worst enemy. If I fail or make a mistake along the way with the critical voices holding the mic, I can spiral into shame from the negative judgments I put upon myself.
Thankfully, there are alternative ways to treat yourself when it comes to specific goals as well as to life more generally, including self-compassion and self-care. Thankfully, I have started recognizing this and developing different practices to help diffuse the self-critical talk.
One of these practices is revisiting a promise I made with myself this past year. During 2021, I decided to write down a series of vows of sorts that describe how I want to support myself in my writing and work as well as in my day-to-day life. With the start of the new year, I have been rereading it to remind myself that I want to choose to self-solidarity rather than self-criticism.
Here are the opening lines from my promise:
“I will have your back. I have spent enough years cutting you down and contorting you to other people’s expectations and wishes. I want to spend the rest of my years standing up for you, extending compassion to you, supporting you. I will do what I can to honor your limits and set boundaries that help you flourish. I will do what I can to balance rest and play with work so that you can live fully.”
These commitments are not the end for me. I am still trying to figure out how to live into them more regularly. But they offer a guide by reminding me of two things:
- My relationship with myself matters in anything I do
- Caring for and being true to myself are values I do not want to sacrifice in order to accomplish something.
At this juncture of the COVID pandemic, I think attending to the question of who we want to be for ourselves as we make and pursue goals for the new year can be a helpful approach. That question can provide more breathing room around goal-setting amid an unpredictable situation that is bigger than all of us. It can give us a chance to reconnect with ourselves and with how our goals contribute to our relationship with ourselves. And it can help us turn away from shaming ourselves through our goals and toward supporting ourselves through the good and bad, goals or no goals.
Whether or not you are working on New Year’s resolutions or setting goals for 2022, I invite you to consider this question and see what difference it may make for you this year:
Who do I want to be, and what kind of relationship do I want to have with myself, in setting, aiming at, and either reaching or not reaching this goal?
Notes
Some resources that have inspired my thinking here include:
Brene Brown’s books, presentations, and podcasts on shame: see, for example, Braving the Wilderness (Random House, 2017); “The Power of Vulnerability,” TEDxHouston, Oct. 6, 2010; and “Unlocking Us” podcast.
Marie Forleo’s interview with Mel Robbins, “Turn Your Life Around with Mel Robbins’ One Weird Habit,” Marie Forleo Podcast, Oct. 11, 2021.
Kristen Neff’s work on self-compassion: see, for example, “The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion,” TEDxCentennialParkWomen, Feb. 6, 2013; and her website, https://self-compassion.org/.
