Photo by Mami

Having looked at Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail and offered some Tips for Keeping Your New Year’s Resolution, it’s time for me to walk the talk and commit to my own resolution for 2008.

For me, last year was about starting lots of new projects and I made three resolutions. This year will be about paring things down and focusing on the essentials, so I’ve just made one. Here it is:

I will sit still for five minutes every day.

This one definitely fits Steve Roesler’s description ‘knowing what to do, but then not doing it’. Whenever I’ve practised daily meditation, it’ always made a big positive difference to my life – but after a while I get too ‘busy’ or complacent to keep it up, start skipping sessions, then a few weeks later realise I’ve forgotten all about it. So now I’m committing to doing it every day for a year.

Meditation is a bit like creativity – if you’re doing it in order to get something else, you’re not really doing it. Having said that, I do notice the following changes – call them side-effects – when I’m meditating every day:

I’m calmer
I’m more present in the moment
I find it easier to concentrate
I make better decisions
I tend to experience more creative flow
I take problems less seriously

(If you’re curious about meditation and haven’t tried it, here’s a good introduction to the basics.)

So how will I keep my resolution?

By following the 6 Tips for Keeping Your New Year’s Resolution that I used to keep last year’s resolutions.

1. Find something you want to do

OK I’ve done that. Meditation isn’t always easy or enjoyable, but it’s definitely rewarding.

2. Focus on what’s in it for you

Hmm, I’m not sure what an enlightened master would have to say about this one! Hopefully I can avoid too much egomania if I approach this in terms of practical motivation. i.e. getting myself to sit on the mat first thing in the morning instead of rushing to switch on the laptop.

So when I’ve just woken up and I’m pondering my next move, I do a quick ‘fast forward’ in my mind about 30 minutes – in one scenario, I’ve been sitting on the mat for half an hour, feeling fresh and relaxed, looking forward to the day; in the other one I couldn’t wait to get going on the laptop, and I’m feeling disappointed and irritated with myself. Once I’ve done that, it’s fairly easy to leave the laptop alone and sit on the mat.

3. Aim low and overachieve

So far I’ve been sitting for 20-30 minutes each morning and I intend to continue like that. But I deliberately chose five minutes so that I have no excuse for skipping a day – even I can’t be ‘too busy’ to take five minutes out of my day!

4. Anticipate and avoid obstacles

The five minute minimum should help me avoid the ‘too busy’ obstacle. Even when I’m travelling for work, I should be able to find a spare five minutes. If it comes to it, I could even practise on the plane or train.

I could get bored, but that’s one of the things you’re supposed to deal with in meditation anyway, so don’t let me give you that excuse.

Maybe I could get an injury or my back could seize up again so I couldn’t sit on the mat. So I could sit on a chair instead. And lying, standing and walking are all common postures for meditation, so no escape there.

5. Make a public commitment

Well I’ve told you so the cat’s out of the bag. Next time I see you, feel free to ask me how I’m getting on with my resolution.

I’ve also told Mrs WT, and it will be fairly obvious to her if I give up.

6. Do it with others

This is the trickiest one. Ideally I’d join a group for regular practice. But I’m already doing that for my poetry and aikido classes, so realistically signing up for another group would start to overload my week. Which would defeat the ‘less is more’ intention behind this resolution.

I was wondering what to do about this the other day as I sat down on the mat. Then it occurred to me that lots of other people were sitting down to practise at the same time, and I suddenly felt part of a group. Don’t worry, it was nothing mystical – I just realised I’d been thinking of it as a solitary activity, but it made just as much sense to think of it as a group activity. Which somehow makes it seem a bit easier.

And Mrs WT has been very supportive and encouraging. No doubt she likes the idea of a slightly more chilled-out version of me. It makes a big difference to a new undertaking when someone special is cheering you on.

7. Treat yourself to some decent kit

This is a bonus tip that occurred to me since I wrote the last post. The picture shows the mat and cushion I’ve been given as a present for my new regime. I know it’s a bit materialistic, but it does pep up your motivation a bit if you’ve got nice equipment to work with.

Having faffed around with various combinations of sofa cushions and yoga mats over the years, it makes a big difference to sit on a proper zafu and zabuton from Blue Banyan. When I sat on them for the first time, I instantly felt calmer and more centred. John would tell me this is because the familiar feeling of sitting on the zafu activates a ‘chemical memory’ of sitting on this kind of support while on meditation retreats. The more I use the mat, the more I will come to associate it with these feelings.

Sitting in the corner of my living room, the mat also serves as a tangible reminder of my resolution. If I don’t follow through with the resolution, I’ll feel a bit sheepish when visitors ask ‘What’s that?’. The mat’s part of the furniture now – it should help me make the habit part of my life.

Over to you…

If you want to make a public commitment of your own, feel free to post your resolution(s) in the comments. Then we can come back next year and see how we all got on.

Right, that’s enough resolutions for one year. On with the creativity…

Photo by Solange Gaymard

My last post looked at 3 Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail. Now I’ll look at how you can keep yours. I’ll start by reviewing my progress on the three New Year’s Resolutions I posted on this blog last year.

1. Make my blogging more like my coaching

I had noticed that my blog was proving increasingly useful as a coaching tool, and wanted to develop my blogging style so that it was closer to my style of coaching. Part of this involved blogging more of the stories, ideas and examples I share with clients in sessions, and part of it involved developing the conversational aspect of the blog and making more use of questions.

I definitely think I’ve succeeded in the first respect, in posts such as 7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure, What Amadeus Shows Us About Creativity, my mini-series on Giving Feedback on Creative Work, and especially in my e-book about Time Management for Creative People. The fact that the e-book has been downloaded 25,000 times in a month tells me that I’m providing something valuable for my audience.

I also think I’ve made progress in developing the blog as a conversation and using questions to stimulate readers’ creativity – although I think I can do a lot more in this respect. I’ve certainly had some great conversations on this blog and elsewhere, and I’ve started to make more use of questions in posts such as What’s the Difference Between Incubation and Procrastination? and Should Artists Give the Audience What They Want?. So I’ve made a good start but think I can take this further – look out for more question-based posts this year!

2. Write More Poetry

Having finished my MA the previous autumn, I resolved to reclaim some of my writing time for poetry. I’m pleased to say I managed to do this, even amid the pressure of so much work-related writing (this blog, training manuals, client proposals etc). My success was largely down to joining Mimi Khalvati’s advanced workshop at the Poetry School. As well as the terrific feedback and encouragement I’ve received from Mimi and the rest of the class, the fact that I committed to bringing poems to the workshop gave me an extra incentive to actually write some. The class has definitely helped me improve my poems, which in turn makes it more enjoyable, reinforcing my motivation to write more.

Again, I can do more in this area, and I’m hoping to find more time for writing poetry this year, but I’m really pleased I got back into the poetic groove in 2007.

3. Make a habit of aikido practice

After spending two years doing the MA and one year writing this blog, my gym membership was a distant memory and I was seriously in need of exercise. But instead of rejoining the gym, Mrs WT and I enrolled at Meridian Aikido dojo. Aikido was something I’d been curious about for years, so I was really excited about it and wanted to establish a regular routine of practising some of the basic movements as well as attending classes.

With the exception of a hiatus in the summer I managed to do this, to the point where most weekdays I would spend a few minutes practising some of the basic movements and ki exercises. The summer break was a lesson to me – once classes finished for the summer, I made up my mind to attend a summer course to keep up the momentum. Unfortunately I was in the middle of a concentrated burst of writing course material – I felt ‘too busy’ and not only stopped classes but got out of the habit of doing my daily exercises. After too many days hunched over the laptop my shoulders seized up, requiring several trips to the chiropractor and a regime of daily yoga and aikido practice to relieve the pain.

It was a relief when the autumn classes started and I got back to more vigorous practice. I also started going to the gym again and I’m finding it a surprisingly welcome late afternoon break after a day spent at the laptop or in meetings. I now want to attend more than one aikido class a week, so the next challenge is to find the time to fit it in…

Looking back over 2007, it feels great to have got back into regular exercise and I hope the summer hiatus was a lesson well learned!

So how can you make sure you keep your resolutions?

Here are the principles I used to keep my resolutions in 2007, and which I’ll be using for my new resolution in 2008. As well as using them for your own resolutions, you may find it useful to keep them in mind any time you are planning a project or setting yourself a new goal.

1. Find something you want to do

This one might seem obvious, but as we saw in my previous post, we often think of resolutions in terms of what we don’t want – i.e. enjoyable things we ’should’ give up, or unpleasant things we ’should’ do. It will be far easier to motivate yourself if you focus on something you actively enjoy doing.

All three of my resolutions were based on things I really enjoy – blogging, coaching, writing poetry and aikido. To take the last one as an example – after all those months of studying, I was arguably more in need of a gym than an aikido dojo, but it turned out that aikido was the perfect way to get me back into an exercise routine. It’s not the most physically demanding form of exercise, but I enjoyed it so much I looked forward to the weekly classes and hardly missed any. That got me back into ‘exercise mode’ and after a certain point it was fairly easy to pick up the gym routine again.

Even if you don’t particularly enjoy the whole activity, look for the bits you do like. E.g. in the gym I enjoy doing weights but can get bored doing cardio, so if I’m trying to get started again I might ‘treat’ myself to a few sessions of weights-only.

Focusing on what you enjoy is particularly important if your resolution involves your creative work. As I said in my post about Amadeus and creativity, intrinsic motivation (i.e. enjoyment of the work itself) is highly correlated with creativity – so if you want creative success, you’d better enjoy yourself!

What’s the most enjoyable part of your resolution? How can you keep that at the front of your mind?

2. Focus on What’s In It For You

Not every resolution is based on things you enjoy doing. The actual business of resisting the urge to smoke, running on a treadmill for the first time in months, or going through the fear barrier of a new challenge can be pretty unpleasant. It’s vital that you find a positive focus to motivate yourself in these cases – by asking ‘What’s in it for me?’

For example, I can have the best accounting software in the world but the actual business of entering invoices and receipts is never going to be high on my list of favourite activities. But if I ask ‘What’s in it for me?’ to get this tedious job done, then I find there’s quite a lot – peace of mind, freeing my attention up for other activities, knowing exactly what I can budget for and make decisions.

If you’re faced with a tedious or unpleasant task, imagine what it will be like once you have finished it and can start enjoying the benefits. Take a moment to register the positive feeling (relief, pleasure, etc). Then remind yourself that every action you take on the task brings you one step closer to that feeling.

3. Aim low and overachieve

In an ideal world it might be great if you went to the gym 5 days a week. But if you make that your resolution then how are you going to feel the week where you’re so busy you only manage 4 visits? It’s amazing how we can sometimes demotivate ourselves by setting our sights too high.

Supposing you resolve to go twice a week and anything else is a bonus? It might not sound so impressive to start with, but once you’ve done a couple of gym sessions, the chances are you’ll be on a roll and feel like doing more.

I certainly don’t recommend ‘aiming low’ for all goal-setting – but remember, the point of a resolution is to get you to do something different. It’s much better to make a small resolution that leads to action than to formulate a grandiose plan that never happens.

With my poetry writing resolution, I knew that realistically I wouldn’t have as much time as I really wanted, but committing to write a few poems each term helped me to actually get some writing done.

What’s the smallest commitment you can make, which virtually guarantees you will do something?

4. Anticipate and avoid obstacles

We can all be ambitious on Day One of a resolution, but there are plenty of pitfalls lying in wait. Faced with getting out of bed on a freezing winter morning, going the extra mile to the gym after a hard day at work, or having that difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding, you’re only human if you’re tempted to take the easy way out. But if you’ve already anticipated the pitfall and worked out a way round it, your chances of success will be much higher.

Being ‘too busy’ is a recurrent pitfall for me. So one of my criteria for picking an aikido dojo was that it had to be within walking distance of my flat, minimising the chances of it being ‘too late’ for me to get to the class after work.

What obstacles will you face in keeping your resolution? What can you do to avoid them?

5. Make a public commitment

After posting my resolutions on this blog I’d feel pretty silly (and pretty inept as a coach) if I didn’t keep them. Funnily enough, I still feel like that even though those of you who read them last year have probably forgotten them long ago. There’s something about making a public commitment that makes us keep it.

One of my first posts on this blog was about Anthony Trollope, who paid one of his manservants to wake him with coffee at 5.30 am so that he could write his novels before breakfast. That strikes me as a very clever way of setting things up. He was obviously committed to writing the best novels he could – but I don’t think that was the main thought in his mind when he woke up in a warm bed in December, with the old man standing over him. If he were alone, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to turn over for ‘five more minutes’ – but there was no way he wanted to lose face in front of his servant. So he got up. And got the novels written.

Sadly I don’t have an elderly manservant to bring me coffee in bed, but the same principle applied to my resolutions. Having told you about my ambitions for the blog, I’d have felt a fraud if I didn’t make an effort to achieve them. Having promised to bring a poem to the class, I’d have been letting the side down if I turned up with excuses. Having signed up for the aikido class with my wife, there were a few evenings where she raised an eyebrow at the suggestion that I was ‘too busy’ to come to the class tonight… and off I went.

You don’t have to tell the world – but tell someone who counts. Someone who will remember, and notice whether you do it.

6. Do it with others

Last but definitely not least – hang around with other people who are doing the same thing. When you’re in a group of people with a common interest, it’s hard not to be infected by their enthusiasm, easy to sympathise with their difficulties, and very rewarding to help each other succeed. Once you’re with the group, you hardly have to worry about motivating yourself – as Mark Earls tells us, it’s the most natural thing in the world for human beings to be infected by the feelings of others and to start copying what they do. So choose your friends wisely.

All three of my resolutions – blogging, poetry and aikido – involved interacting with other people, giving each other encouragement, support, feedback and inspiration. Most of my friends are still baffled by the idea of blogging, but that’s OK, there are plenty of you out there who give me all the encouragement I need to keep writing Wishful Thinking. Most people I know have no interest in poetry, but as soon as I walked through the door at the Poetry School several years ago, I instantly felt at home – here were people just like me, as obsessed with poetry as I was, and writing to a disconcertingly high standard – could I keep up with them?

As for aikido – if you look at the picture at the top of this post, it might look as though I’m winning the fight. But if you look a little closer, you’ll notice that my ‘opponent’ is wearing the black hakama that signifies a black belt. And if the picture were in colour, you’d see that I’m wearing a lowly red belt, so the chances of me defeating a sensei like Huw Woodman would be pretty slim. In fact, the picture shows Huw very patiently teaching me how to execute a throw correctly, by allowing me to throw him over and over again while he gives me feedback on my technique. Huw’s patience and helpfulness is typical of the supportive atmosphere at Meridian Aikido, fostered by Tony Ecclestone sensei (looking on in the background). That atmosphere is what makes aikido one of the highlights of my week, and renders the concepts of ‘motivation’ and ‘willpower’ irrelevant in terms of keeping the resolution.

Whatever your resolution, if you can find a group of people with an attitude like that who all want to do the same thing, you won’t have to worry about keeping it.

Who else is trying to do what you want to do? How can you join in with them?

How about you?

How have you successfully kept a resolution in the past?

What are your plans for keeping this year’s resolution?

——-

In the spirit of public commitment, my next post is about my resolution for 2008.

Photo: The Temptation of St Anthony by RyanDianna

This time last year I posted my new year’s resolutions on this blog. I also promised to write about ‘Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail’. I’m pleased to say I kept all my resolutions – my next post will tell you how I did it, and how you can keep yours. I’m afraid I didn’t get round to the post about why resolutions fail – so here it is.

The following three pitfalls have been highlighted for me over and over again while coaching clients to keep their resolutions – and I can assure you I’ve made the same mistakes myself many times.

1. You focus on what you ’should’ do, not on what you want

This is an easy trap to fall into. After all, there are plenty of things we probably ’should’ do that don’t seem a lot of fun, especially at this time of year. For example:

‘I should really lose some weight’
‘I need to get fit this year’
‘I ought to give up smoking’
‘I have to do my tax return’

Have a read of that list again – how does it make you feel? Personally it gives me a feeling of mild disgust and aversion. The words ‘losing’, ‘giving up’, ‘weight’, ‘bad habits’, and ‘tax returns’ conjure up a succession of mental images that make me feel slightly depressed if I focus on them.

This is the problem with the ’should’ mindset. Logically, those are all sensible things to do – but instead of motivating you to get going, they have the opposite effect. This is partly because they are all ‘problem focused’ statements. It’s a classic case of ‘don’t think of a pink elephant’ – your brain can’t process these statements without making you think about what you don’t want. And nobody likes thinking about what they don’t want – our natural tendency is to put it to the back of our mind and forget all about it.

Another problem with these statements is the use of the words ’should’, ‘need’, ‘ought’, and ‘have to’. This kind of language dissociates you from your real reasons for wanting to do these things. It’s as if there were some kind of objective standard that you really ’should’ measure up to, or – even worse – as if someone else were telling you what to do. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand being told what to do – if someone offers me well-meaning advice my knee-jerk reaction is to want to do the opposite.

2. You rely on willpower

Hand in hand with ’should’ comes ‘willpower’. Smokers are particularly fond of this one. The idea is that if you exert enough of this magical force, you will somehow be able to overcome your real desires (’cravings’, ‘temptations’ etc) and stop yourself doing what you desperately want to (smoking cigarettes, eating cream buns, mainlining heroin etc.).

Willpower is basically an extension of the weird prejudice against emotions in modern culture – acting on your feelings may be OK for children or Romantic poets, but when we grow up we’re expected to put away such childish things and become reasonable, rational adults. John has plenty to say about this. But I digress.

The big problem with willpower is that it’s hard work. You have to force yourself to stay on the straight and narrow, and avoid giving in to weakness. You have to be vigilant at all times. And it’s hard to escape the nagging thought that you might not have enough willpower to see this through. After all, you’re only human – sooner or later, your resolution cracks and you wake up the next morning full of remorse, berating yourself for not being strong enough to resist temptation.

Fortunately you don’t need to worry about willpower, as it doesn’t exist. As the great sage Homer Simpson says, it’s ‘imaginary – like elves, goblins and eskimos’.

3. You try to go it alone

Self-improvement is a lonely place. When you’re going through the pain, struggle, fear and worry associated with changing long-established habits, it can feel like you’re the only person in the world who has had to deal with the difficulties you’re facing.

To give an extreme example – about 10 years ago I was working as a psychotherapist in the NHS with people with addiction problems. One of the questions we used to ask drug users and heavy drinkers was ‘Are you prepared to make some new friends?’. Because if you are a recovering addict hanging around with your friends at a party, in the pub or on the park bench and you are the only one who isn’t drinking, smoking, snorting or injecting something, then you’re likely to feel a bit left out. And the longer you sit there watching everyone else having a good time, the stronger grows the temptation to give in and join the merry throng. On the other hand, if you start hanging around with people who share your enthusiasm for golf or skydiving or embroidery then it’s a lot easier to keep your attention (and hands) occupied with these activities – and the cravings have a tendency to fade into the background.

OK so that’s an extreme example, but if you’ve ever tried to give up smoking and sat there in the pub watching your mates light up, or if you’ve ever been on a diet watching your maddeningly thin friends tucking into a second helping of chocolate pudding, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Mark has plenty to say about this.

Trying to make changes on your own also gives your inner saboteur plenty of opportunities to derail your good intentions. Like at the end of a hard day, when you can’t help thinking that ‘no-one would ever know’ if you went home and flopped out on the sofa instead of going to the gym as you planned…

So how can you make sure you keep your Resolutions?

If you want to make it easier and more enjoyable to keep your New Year’s Resolutions then I’ll offer some suggestions in my next post.

I’m pleased to say Mrs Wishful Thinking and I both passed our aikido red belt grading last night.

I was impressed by the grading test – it was quite formal, we had to line up and perform the techniques in front of the rest of the class, black belts in front of us, brown belts watching from behind. And there’s something very satisfying about having passed the first test – like the first step on a long journey. Breaking things down into specific, measurable steps is good practice in setting goals, and aikido has evidently got this down to a fine art.

This is one of the things we had to do – we weren’t as fast or agressive as this though.

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Here’s my third and final New Year’s Resolution, following on from No.1 – Make My Blogging More Like My Coaching and No.2 – Write More Poetry. As promised, I’ll follow up my own resolutions with a post about Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail – and what to do about it.

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All this digital stuff is great fun, but you can have too much of a good thing. The more time I spend on blogging and related activities, the more I need to balance it out with some physical activity to keep me grounded in the real world. This became particularly clear to me last summer, when my MA research project took over my life and my visits to the gym petered out. So when autumn came round, I took the opportunity to start learning aikido – a martial art I had been curious about for ages.

I was fortunate enough to discover Meridian Aikido, a club within walking distance of my home (eliminating one excuse for missing classes) whose members have been very friendly and helpful. One of the things that attracted me to aikido was its un-macho emphasis on ethical self-defence – using an attacker’s own force and momentum to catch them off-balance and immobilise them without harming them. The spirit of aikido seems very evident in the relaxed, welcoming atmosphere at the Meridian dojo, and I’ve been very impressed with the members’ eagerness to help us learn the ropes. There’s something quite humbling about having a black-belt practitioner patiently spend 15 minutes showing me how to throw him properly, getting up again and again to show me where I’m going wrong.

I’ve been told that it typically takes longer to learn aikido than other martial arts. Having spent a term trying to get to grips with the basics, it certainly seems fiendishly complicated and difficult. But I’ve also had glimpses of something profoundly enjoyable, even exhilarating. A few times when ‘throwing’ someone has felt more like stepping out of the way and letting them fall by themselves. Or feeling the same effortless momentum being thrown off the end of a jo staff.

So my third New Year’s Resolution is to make a habit of aikido practice. Preferably every day. I obviously can’t practise on the mat every day, but I should at least be able to manage some of the warm-up and co-ordination exercises. Fortunately Mrs Wishful Thinking is also learning, so I’ll have a partner for practice. (Unfortunately this means she can now inflict severe pain on me with minimal effort…)

The philosophy of aikido is that it’s not just a fighting discipline but should be integrated into your whole life. My coaching work often involves untangling disagreements and resolving conflict, so I’m really interested to see what I can learn from aikido principles in this area. And because I believe creativity is a full-body sport, I’m hoping aikido will help to keep me in creative flow.

I’m posting this today partly as a way of focusing my attention for my first grading test tonight – for the rank of 6th Kyu (red belt). Wish me luck!

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