Foxy New Year, part 2 - Cultivating Resolutions that Spark Joy
Foxy New Year, part 2
Hellooooooo there!
It’s the second week of the Newsletter for Foxes and you’ve inspired my enthusiastic greeting for three reasons. First, there are even more foxes now in our earth (yes, that’s a group of foxes!) and I am overjoyed. Even better, many of you shared with me your resolutions, for which I am honored (and we’ll all benefit!). Finally, and perhaps best of all, we are working on cultivating our resolutions that spark joy.
This week, we’re progressing from choosing to cultivating. This means we are ready to develop our resolutions into sustainable goals that don’t overwhelm, so that we can treat our true selves as the highest priority in our lives.
Sustainable goals have the greatest opportunity to become habits. We ultimately want our goals to become habits because once we’ve formed a good habit, we can routinely operate as desired without exercising our limited decision-making powers. I’ll elaborate more on this in a future newsletter. For now, we are going to focus our decision-making on making our goals sustainable.
If your resolution truly sparks joy, then it will be sustainable if you can make it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This “SMART” goal principle is commonly used in business and leadership applications, and is also on point here.
Specific
To be specific, a goal must state what you will do, using action words. Many of you already practice this essential step. Examples I received include: “I will make material progress towards financial independence”; “I will spend time outside on a weekly basis”; and “I will quiet negative thoughts and chatter.” Your goals are totally foxy. Let’s make them foxier by reducing ambiguity by adding measurable steps.
Measurable
A goal is measurable when it provides a method to evaluate progress, using data or metrics. You can create your own method or rely on established metrics. The essence of this requirement is that you can track your progress. After all, realizing progress is one of the best motivators in life, because it feels good to become better, foxier people. Progress is also a renewable and reliable source of inspiration that can fuel work on both the instant goal and additional goals. If you feel that you are making progress (even baby fox steps!), I can guarantee that you will have a more positive affect in life that will eventually spill over into all of your endeavors.
Looking to your resolutions from above, let’s workshop “I will make material progress towards financial independence.” We can easily spot the ambiguity here - what does “material progress” mean? Another fox has a similar goal, but makes hers measurable by specifying that she will “pay off all of [her] credit card debt.” This is measurable because it uses the clearly defined metric of “all credit card debt.” So, “material progress towards financial independence” could be rephrased or supplemented to add a method of measurement, such as “I will make material progress towards financial independence by saving 10% of each paycheck.” Or, “by eating out only once a week.” The key is to incorporate a metric that enables you to track your progress.
Another wonderful example from your resolutions is the commitment to “quiet negative thoughts and chatter.” To make this measurable, we can use another fox’s resolution as inspiration, which is, “to practice a moment (or several) of gratitude every day.” In this instance, negative thoughts are replaced with thoughts of gratitude, at least for a moment. But that single moment of practice, implemented daily, may train the mind to focus on thankfulness throughout the day, and ultimately to positively alter our world perspective. We are limited in how much we can reduce the negativity in our lives, but we are limitless in how much we celebrate and encourage positivity within ourselves and with each other. I love this goal because it is measurable when you define a “moment” as “minute”, and it sets a low barrier to entry while encouraging more moments of gratitude. Such phrasing also helps make the goal achievable.
Achievable
For a goal to be achievable, it must be capable of being reached within the scope of your life. You know your foxy self best, so it is important to be realistic here. Think about the time and resources you have available to commit. Resolving to practice 6 hours of yoga every day may not be realistic if you’re a full-time employee and a mother of two. Let’s workshop another set of resolutions to figure out what may be achievable.
Start with the specific action: “I will spend time outside on a weekly basis.” Make it measurable by defining how much time: “I will spend one hour outside every day.” Now, ask whether it’s achievable. If it’s not at first glance, consider whether there are any workarounds. In this example, if your workday consumes the majority of daylight hours and it’s unsafe or uncomfortable to be outside at night, committing to a solid hour outside every day may be unachievable. But you could redefine the goal so that the hour can be achieved in the aggregate, with 15 minutes before work, 30 minutes at lunch, and 15 minutes after work spent outside.
Relevant
It is also important that your chosen action and metrics are relevant, meaning that they take you closer to achieving your resolution. In our moments of gratitude example, practicing one minute of thankfulness every day will probably take you closer to your resolution of “quieting negative thoughts and chatter” by changing your outlook and refocusing your mind on positive thoughts.
Remember that sustainable progress is most important. Give yourself permission to adjust your goals as you implement your chosen actions and learn about whether they are achievable and relevant. Whether you take baby steps or leaps and bounds of progress, your goals are created to serve you in becoming your foxiest self.
Time-bound
The final component of cultivating our goals is to set a timeframe. To choose an appropriate timeframe, we need to be both realistic and optimistic about our foxy powers.
Last week, I promised to share one of my resolutions with you, and I’ve saved it for this section because I am very bad at achieving my resolutions within the timeframe I’ve selected. I tend to choose enormous resolutions, and way too many of them, with very short timeframes for achievement. I almost never meet my timeframe. This year, I’m starting anew. Like you, I’m choosing three resolutions that spark joy. And I’m taking specific, achievable, relevant, measurable, and time-bound steps towards them.
Like many of you, I aspire to be a healthier fox. For years, I have had the goal of practicing yoga for an hour every day in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. That goal usually reads, “I will practice yoga every day for an hour, starting immediately.” But this timeframe is too close, and the action metric too big. Jumping from zero to hero is super difficult to start, and very challenging to maintain. No habits have been established and the barrier to success is high. It makes sense that my results read like a yoyo; I have not been able to maintain a consistent yoga practice. This year, I’m revising my timeframe and metrics to make my goal sustainable.
My revised goal is to strengthen my immune system by practicing yoga for 5 minutes every day for 3 months. I can hear you wondering, 5 minutes…that’s all it takes? Well, for me, I think that it does. I tend to dive deep on tasks, so if I set my timer for 5 minutes, there’s a significant chance that I will continue on. To maximize my efforts, I should choose a time of day to practice that is least likely to pose interruption. Worst case scenario, if all I get is 5 minutes, then at least I get 5 minutes every day, which is more than I am currently practicing.
Even with just 5 minutes, I will also benefit from the positive ripple effect of exercise and progress. Exercise creates endorphins, encourages healthier eating and less drinking, and directly improves the immune system. Achieving my five-minute goal will also inspire me to work towards achieving my other endeavors because I will experience success every day. And success fuels sustainable progress.
Next week, I’ll discuss how to hone our goals to reflect our inherent motivations and tendencies. Understanding ourselves is essential to avoiding feeling overwhelmed when working on resolutions. Even when a goal is sustainable, an episode of feeling overwhelmed can discourage or prevent progress. We are also going to look at how to prevent external interruptions and emergencies from being fatal to our progress. We will not let our resolutions revert to dreams!
If you’d like to share any revised or new goals with me, please do so. I always welcome more foxiness! I’m also looking for more foxes, so please share this email with friends, family, and anyone who you think might want to join us. I have an incredible amount of inspiring content planned for you, with this newsletter and Merrifox. YouTube videos, Patreon rewards, and art prints are all in the making.
Three cheers for my lovely foxes,
“Don’t count the days; make the days count.”
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