January 3, 2018 • 46 mins
While Bridget might roll her eyes at the thought of sure-to-fail New Year’s Resolutions, Emilie geeks out on today’s episode with a bunch of Bossed Up hacks about how to set yourself up for sustainable success in 2018.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to stuff mom
never told you. And Happy New Year, Happy New Year.
I am ready, are you? Are you ready for I'm
(00:25):
never quite ready. I'll get there. I'll be ready for
it in like August. I love it. I hope everyone
listening had a wonderful, relaxing, chill holiday break. And I'm
thrilled to be back in y'all's earbuds because we've got
a lot to do in. Some people are calling this
the year of the woman. By the way, have you
seen that? I have seen that. Yeah, I think this
(00:46):
will be the year of the not white man. I
like it. So it's like a good year for getting
clear on what you want to do with this clean
slate that is the brand new year. I guess when
this comes out, it will be what January third, in
the New Year days in is a good time to
(01:07):
get together. Getting together. However, as we start the conversation
today around New Year's resolutions, I want to first acknowledge
that New Year's resolutions have become very uncool, haven't they?
They have, And I actually have to admit that I
don't really I'm not really down with New Year's resolutions.
(01:27):
I think other people should do them, and if it
makes other people feel in control of their where their
year is going, more power to them. They're not for me, okay,
other than the fact that you're the ultimate cool girl.
Why why? Why? Why are New Year's resolutions so passe?
For a lot of reasons. One for me, I think
(01:48):
that I never I never stick with them. There was
one night my resolution was not to burn my tongue
on any hot foods. And I was at a New
Year's Eve party and before that party was over, I
had burned my tongue. Well, technically that means oh wait no,
it was after midnight. Start year with a burnt tongue.
But I was like, dang, I really, I can't get
I can't do him. Um. I try to stick with
(02:09):
something that's really really small and tangible. Um, you know,
I'm going to read a book this year or something
something really dumb and small. Uh. I think that we
should be thinking about getting our stuff together all year round,
and I think that New Year's puts a weird pressure
on it that for me, as soon as it's a
defined thing, I'm less likely to do it. You are
such a rebel. I just love it. It's not gonna happen.
(02:33):
Rebel without a cause over here, I think, bust out
the biker jacket, Bridget, I have one. I know you
know um well, Actually, to be fair, you're in a
very very good company. There's a lot of different pseudo
science thrown around around this time of year about how
like eight percent of people who set New Year's resolutions
don't follow through, or there's another number of eight percent
(02:55):
people actually make it happen. So I totally get it.
I gets It's so funny because as a writer, I've
pitched pieces on New Year's resolutions to major publications and
everyone comes back and says, no, we want an anti
New Year's resolutions piece, not a pro New Year's Resolutions piece.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't write that piece
(03:16):
for you because I'm so into resolutions and this of
course makes me nerdy and uncool. However, I think we're
all used to hearing that from me at this point,
because I really think, especially in light of everything we
talked about in the role Overload series, all the ways
in which women in particular can struggle with the many
(03:37):
different hats we were expected to wear the New Year's
resolutions to me is a proclamation of ownership over your
own destiny. Now do we all own everything about our destiny? No,
but I think it's almost a radical act to sit
down and give yourself the time and give yourself the
effort and focus to say, what would I want to
(04:00):
do with my year if I could do anything? See,
I actually am down with that framing. It's more positive
and less sort of punitive if you don't stick with
this thing you said you were going to do on
January one and you failed in your year. I think
sitting down and having a little bit of intentionality baked
into your life about where you want to where you
want to see yourself, and let yourself fantasize about what
(04:22):
your life could look like. You know what you want,
where you want to be in the next year. I
think that's okay. I just the thing that immediately gets
me going is the idea that if you don't do
X this year, then you've been your year is a
wash and you haven't lived up to your potential. That's
interesting because it really is a framing. It's a perspective, definitely,
(04:42):
and it's up to you, I think, to to define
your own perspective. But I was watching cable TV, which
is not something I do too much of, but yesterday
while I was doing little to no work at all,
and all the weight Watchers commercials are on full blast
right now, all the joint a gym lose ten pounds,
(05:03):
all those sort of services and products that people want
to hawk at you right now because they know that
we are all making the same ten resolutions. Definitely, I
always someone who kind of rolls my eyes whenever things
that start out seeming they're like well intentioned becomes sort
of hyper steeped. And we know you're thinking about getting
(05:25):
your life together, here's a million commercials about why you
should be going to the gym or do winning weight Watchers.
It almost feels like it's exploiting a positive internal thing
that people are feeling to like make them sign up
for a gym membership or something. Um. And so I think,
I whenever when I see the commercials on a loop
as you've just described, on like this again um And
also does make me feel bad because I know I'm
the person who should be probably doing it, and I'm like, oh,
(05:46):
I'm not gonna do it, And then there's me on
the other side of the spectrum who is quite literally
hawking things at people right now who want to be
overachiever list making efficiency junkies like myself. So I take
no offense at the at the very valid point you've
just made. But I also I am laughing over here
(06:06):
because I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing, because
I like the proactivity of getting my stuff together at
the top of the new year. There's something wrong with it,
And I think that you are in good company because
so many people are buying organizational tools and getting their
house cleaned and all of that, like to start the
new year off fresh. I think that's a very very
positive thing. So I don't want to be I don't
(06:28):
want to say that that is a bad impulse at all.
I just I think around this time of year, you
see so much about it, it feels a little bit
weird for me. I also something that one of my
biggest pet peeves, speaking of people who are going to
the gym and weight watchers. I hate how people who
go to the gym regularly the way that you're supposed
to sometimes shame people who are sort of doing it
(06:51):
for the new year's solution, right, Like like Oh, the
gym is going to be full of people who are
just there because it's New Year's I hate that. I
think we shouldn't. So I'm very mindful of not shaming
people who are taking the New Year's plunge and getting organized,
getting a planner, getting their house cleaned, you know, whatever
the thing is they're doing. I don't want to shame them, right,
And so that's it's such an interesting point how New
(07:13):
Year's resolutions have become a very judgmental sting that people
have very strong opinions on. So I just want to
name that as we start this episode. I think it's
clear kind of where we stand a New Year's resolutions,
and that's going to make this conversation even more rich,
I think, I hope. So I like it. I mean,
I'm excited I'm going to resolve for the New Year
(07:33):
that it's going to be a rich conversation. Oh I
like that. Wait, so what are if you did have
to name a single or any real resolution for your
bridget what would it be? Myen resolutions? I mean they're
so dumb. Uh. One is to drink more water. It's
kind of an easy, it's super easy. So it's like
maybe I'll do it, maybe I won't. Another This one
(07:56):
is more serious. It's I'm notoriously bad at email, Like
you text me, fine, if you teach at me, fine,
something about an email. I'm like, oh, i'll do look
us later than I forget. And then it's almost feels
like it's two it's gone too long to respond, and
it's like, now it's almost rude if I do reply.
So I want to reply to emails in a timely manner. Yes,
(08:16):
I just unsubscribed myself from no less than seventy five
newsletters for that very reason. That's a good idea. Maybe
that's a that could be another one. I'm gonna throw
that in the mix. I'll subscribe to list serves and
head letters that don't bring me joy or then I
don't read. I just feel guilty for having them in
my inbox and never reading them. So I'd rather unsubscribe
than not have them at all. That's a good result.
(08:37):
I just switched to inbox from Google to which is
a different email. So I'll have talking more about that. Yeah,
because that's definitely on my list. So would you like
to hear a resolution? I have? Let's hear it. So
this is like an overarching theme. But I want to
meet eighteen my year of fun. I literally worked too
much last year for my own liking, so I'm trying
(08:58):
to prioritize fun all year long. We'll see how long
I left. It's very emily to pencil in and like
calendar out some fun. I bet you have a spreadsheet
that says I already there's already a working fun And
honestly it's like every single month for the year and
a minimum. But I think this is a good way
(09:19):
to look at it. From the bird's eye view. I
have like something extraordinarily fun. I'm looking forward to. What is?
Do you want to share what it is? For this moment?
Is for this quarter, I am going to Columbia, my
mother's country of origin, with my mom. We're flying out
on her sixtieth birthday for a week long trip to
(09:39):
Bogata and then we're backpacking near Santa Martha and we're
gonna go visit some family that I've never met before.
I've never been to Columbia before, and it's going to
be this mother daughter bonding drip and I'm so excited.
That sounds really fun. It's really fun, and it's been.
I've been trying to make that happen for like ten years,
so you're fun it's happening. I like it all right.
I think we should take a quick break, and when
(09:59):
we come back, I want to really dive into the
first and most important reason behind why I think New
Year's resolutions are in fact a good opportunity to be intentional.
As you said, bridget about your new year. We'll be
right back after this quick break, and we're back and
(10:25):
we are talking through New Year's resolutions, and especially thinking
back to the Role Overload series we did towards the
end of last year, I want to acknowledge that if
you are resonating with those episodes and you are feeling like, hell, yeah,
I am a working daughter, or a working mother, or
just a single lady who wants to think critically about
(10:47):
the goals I'm pursuing the roles I am playing the
hats I'm wearing. This is actually a really good time
to make the new year a fresh start. In fact,
a bunch of interesting research around behavioral psychology and how
temporal landmarks like the first of the year or the
(11:08):
first day of the week, the first day of the month,
or the first day of a new season have been
shown to be really salient in terms of sustaining motivation
when pursuing new goals. Catherine Milkman and her co authors
have produced research showing that the fresh start effect is
very real. As it turns out, we are much more
(11:29):
likely to have high motivation and more likely to actually
sustain that motivation when we capitalize on temporal landmarks on
the start of something new. Is basically like you're riding
a wave of motivation which is more likely to be
piqued at the start of a new even psychological landmark.
(11:49):
But what I love about that part of the research
is that it doesn't have to necessarily be tied to
the first of the year. It can be a Monday,
or your birthday or the first of the month. And
I think thinking about your holes in ways that are
tied to some temporal thing makes sense. And I like
the idea that it doesn't just have to be January one,
here's what I'm doing for the year. It can be
(12:10):
anything that feels like a significant temporal landmark in your
life exactly. It could be a birthday. Totally agree. I
think baking into this idea that it can be repeatable
that it can fit any kind of different life, whether
or not something that you're someone that the first of
the year is a big deal for you. I think
it's better than having it be first of the year.
This is your one time to make a new plan,
and if you don't do it, then you suck right well.
(12:31):
What's interesting is that these temporal landmarks are tend to
be days that stand out to you, so they just
have to be meaningful to you to generate that fresh
start feeling, kind of like that blank slate feeling that
really does come up for a lot of us at
the start of the new year. But I also like
to think of this as something that happens every month,
the fresh start that is the top of the month.
(12:53):
I am way more productive and think more strategically about
what I want to get done in a new month
at the top of the month, as opposed to the
middle or the end of a month. Same thing with
the start of a new week. I'm a Monday person.
I like mondays. I know that makes me a weirdo,
but I like the fresh start feeling of hitting the
ground running at the top of a new week. And
(13:13):
what's interesting is researchers think they postulate that these temporal
landmarks tend to be effective because they make us feel
more distant from our past failures. I know, it's kind
of like it's almost like you can presume that I
can be someone new. That's a really positive, aspirational way
(13:36):
of freaking it. I think exactly. Milkman herself rights. The
fresh start effect hinges on the idea that we don't
feel as perfect about our past as we like. We're
always striving to be better, and when we can wipe
out all those failures and look at a clean slate,
it makes us feel more capable and drives us forward.
That's like all those hashtag new year knew me posts
(13:57):
on Instagram. To be clear, I am that bad. I
have not hashtag that just yet, but don't give me
the ideas. The baseline here is if you feel like
the new year is an opportunity for you to psychologically
leave your past failures behind, capitalize on it. And that's
why I like to seize that opportunity because if you
(14:18):
think about it, it it only comes around once a year.
Although I like to do this kind of a thing
on my birthday too. I always think about, like lessons
learned on my birthday from the past year more so
than goals for the for the next year. I like that. Yeah,
but I don't know. I've started this tradition about three
years ago. Brad the Boo and I do an annual
like collective New Year's resolutions list, which is way different
(14:41):
like for like for the couple. Yeah, are you comfortable
sharing one of your collective resolutions? Sure? Um, so we
just did this and it's hanging up at home in
the in the kitchen cabinet that you have to open
to get to the coffee. Well, you're a fund was
on there, because that's kind of a collective one. Make
good use of our companion pass. So this is not
a Southwest ad, but I am a Southwest super user
(15:04):
and last year I traveled a hundred and twenty thousand
miles and earned a companion Pass, which means Brad flies
for free anywhere that I fly anytime we want. So
we want to look back on and say we made
very good use of that companion pass. That's a very
good goal. Yeah. I mean I feel like it's flexible,
you know, it's not like a smart goal, strategic measurable
(15:25):
actiona blah blah blah. But it's a it's a resolution.
It's like that. I like the idea of shared goals
for people that have, you know, shared lives. Yeah, I
think for anybody who has shared lives, even if it's
a house goal with a bunch of roommates or a
family goal, I find that that collective articulation is more
powerful than writing this high stakes lift down for myself
(15:46):
and looking at it and it feeling really daunting and scary.
The bottom line is, capitalize on the fresh start effect
if it works for you. If New Year's didn't feel
like a fresh start for you, start on Monday, or
use the next top of the months that you have,
or if you work the kind of job that has
a season. I have a friend who's a wedding planner,
and so for her, the beginning of wedding season I
forget when she marks it. I want to say it's May,
(16:09):
but for her that marks sort of the beginning of
her professional year. For a lot of folks in politics,
election days and things like that are good temporal markers,
and so I think it's important to remember for your
own life, for your own industry, for whatever you're doing,
and wherever you're at. These temporal markers can be their
own thing that the rest of us don't even have exactly,
and you have to really make them if they don't
(16:30):
exist naturally in your life. So my mom works shift work,
and she'll do twelve hours at a time, three or
four days a week, and there isn't this regularity to
her schedule per se. So sometimes you have to build
that structure in if you want to feel like you
can capitalize on it. You know, if if if it's
not naturally a part of your rhythm. Now, how you
(16:51):
capitalize on the fresh start effect is also super important.
I have a very controversial feeling about vision boards. I'm
wondering what yours might be, Bridget I don't know if
you're a vision board person, could you see me? No,
no shade on them. I have plenty of shade for
(17:12):
vision boards. So here here's what my shade is. It's
not that you know, cutting and pasting or anything is
like essentially basic about it. My beef with vision boards
is that it's not good. According to the research, it
is actually counter productive to over invest in your clarifying
of your destination. The more times you pin your dream
(17:35):
house on a pinterest board instead of focusing on the
plan how you're going to get there, the journey over
the destination. The less mental faculties are left over for
you to focus on the hard part, which is the how.
So I get it. If you're not quite sure what
your vision is, if you're not quite sure what you're
aiming for, you definitely want to spend some time there.
But if you have a pretty solid idea of where
(17:58):
you want to be heading this year, don't overly focus
on the destination. Instead, get busy planning for the journey
to get there. What's fascinating is that some research has
actually shown that an over emphasis of focusing on the
goals alone without focusing on the action plan can make
you feel it sort of tricks your brain into feeling
(18:19):
like you've already achieved them, or like you've already made
significant progress. Spoiler alert, your vision board didn't actually make
any progress in you achieving that vision. I'm so sorry
to break the news, and I'm going to get hate
for this, and I'm ready for it, y'all, but I
have I have a real strong dislike of vision boards
because they can actually take up precious time and effort
(18:41):
that could be focused on the plan. Well, I saw
a great quote, and I hate like inspirational quotes, but
this one I did think, Oh, that that's I'm down with.
That said go to sleep with dreams and wake up
with plans. And I like that because it's good to
have dreams, it's good to visualized dreams. But if you're
not planning for how you're going to get there exactly
like you said, it can feel like you've made significant
(19:02):
investments in a plan when in fact, you just thought
about it and it sounds really nice and it seems
really cool, and like you know, that house that you
want looks great on Pinterest and this and that, but
you haven't actually done the steps to get you closer
to having a plan for how you're going to achieve
it exactly, And it can make you feel like you've
already done something, which might demotivate you from actually working
(19:23):
on the journey. There was some research done where they
took a group of students who had a test that
they were studying for. I think the test was like
a couple of weeks away. They asked one subset one
third of the students to close their eyes and visualize
themselves acing the test. They asked another group, a third
of the student body, to close their eyes, visualize themselves
(19:46):
acing the test, and then write like one or two
sentences for how they were going to do that, therefore
provoking them to really make a plan. And then the
other third they did nothing at all, no exercise, no visualization,
no planning. That's the control group. Which of those three
groups do you think did the best on the test?
Definitely the group that wrote about their plans right, exactly
(20:07):
as one might imagine. However, the most fascinating part of
this research is that the control group they are performed
the group that was told to visualize success without planning. See,
that doesn't surprise me at all, mostly because it's how
I live my life. I'm not going to plan for this,
and it kind of might go okay, like, is not ya?
(20:32):
That is not at all the conclusion I'm going. But
what's fascinating is that visualizing success alone without the second
more important part of how you're going to make that happen,
can be worse than not visualizing at all. It really
takes me back to my political organizing days, when you're
asking people to make plans for how they will get
to the polls. And so if you say will you
(20:54):
vote for X y Z candidate and they're like great, yes,
If you say okay, great, how are you getting to
the polls and you make them think about it, they're
much more likely to actually vote if they even spend
thirty seconds saying while I'm going to take the bus
at my lunch break to go vote. Yes, If they
just say yes, I'll vote for X y Z candidate,
they're less likely to actually follow through because they haven't
even visualized themselves taking that action exactly, because it's not
(21:17):
always the intention that's not there, it's the plan, and
lives are busy. People are busy. I think that's such
a great example. And by doing that mental exercise like
you just described, it gives the voter, or really anyone
with a goal, the opportunity to predict and overcome roadblocks
before they arrive. So if you had asked me if
(21:38):
I was going out to vote, and I said yes,
I'm gonna take the bus, it might be in that
very moment that I realized, oh wait, I've moved since
the last time I voted. I actually don't know where
my pulling location is. It might help me think about
for the first time, and it spur me to foresee
that I have a challenge that I wouldn't have otherwise
foreseen and could have prevented me from voting. So it's it.
(22:00):
It provides the mental opportunity for you to predict a
roadblock and predict an obstacle. Why are you smiling at
me like that? Am I geeking out now? That that
was just a good point? I was just I was
just like, OK, that's a good point. I think we
should talk a little bit more about different obstacles and
(22:20):
how you can overcome them to meet our goals. After
a quick break and we're back just talking through some
ways that we can power through the obstacles that are
standing in the way between us and our New Year's goals.
And one of them something that I totally identify with
(22:40):
is even though you've got a clear goal, even though
you're you have a plan for how you're gonna get there,
it's still feeling sort of sluggish and unmotivated when it
comes to actually putting that plan into motion. Totally. I mean,
New Year's resolutions wouldn't be what they are unless they
were hard, right, Like goal attainment is tricky. That's why
there's such a wealth of research around them and products
(23:02):
and services to help people make them happen. Because it's
not that setting goals is hard, because people love setting goals,
myself included. It's sustaining your motivation that gets tricky. And
our bodies naturally kind of operate on a rhythm, and
so does our motivation. We get very excited at the
beginning of fresh starts, and of course we get excited
(23:23):
when we're close to the finish line, but it's the
slog in between that can be not exactly motivating. But
I found this one incredible little trick that has been
really helpful to myself personally, but also fascinating when it
comes to business cases for it, and the idea is
to give yourself a head start. This comes right out
(23:45):
of one of my favorite books, Switched by Chip and
Dan Heath, all about how to Change when Change Is Hard,
which is one of the books that I completely geek
out about when it comes to behavior change in psychology
and cognitive science. So in their book they give the
six sample of a car wash that used loyalty cards
to try to create repeat customers. And again, this is
(24:06):
a business case, but I think it can be absolutely
applied to your personal goals, resolutions, and life at large.
One set of customers were given a punch car that
needed ten stamps or whatever to get a free car wash,
whereas another set of customers that the same car wash
was given this card with twelve stamps to get but
(24:26):
they were already given two stamps when they were handed
the card. So that second group of customers were given
the sensation that they kind of had a free start.
They had a sense of investment, like they've been already
given a gift of being ahead of the curve. They've
been given a head start. Well, that makes perfect sense
to me. It's that feeling of when you do a
(24:47):
to do list, when you cross off the first thing
because you've already done it. You're like, oh, I'm while
out of my way, even though it's a gimme, it's
a freebe I do that all the time. So if
you're making a list, number one, make list, doing it
right now done. Sometimes I make it to do list
just because I've done something I want to cross off,
you know, I mean, I just said the first thing
(25:07):
of the day, should I should make a hole to
do list? And across that went on. Yeah, it's iun silly,
but these little head starts really give us that sensation
in our brain of that feeling of completion, so you
can move on to the next thing. I think it
sets yourself up for success. Right. What's interesting is even
though both of those groups have the same distance to
the goal, the response was significantly higher for the group
(25:27):
with a pre punched headstart card. So your motivation is
spurred on by progress itself. It's this idea that progress
begets progress. Progress is in and of itself, a motivation booster.
So the idea is to give yourself a head start
wherever you can, however you can to show your own momentum,
(25:49):
because that momentum will help you move forward. I think
specifically applying that to New Year's resolutions, you can think
about the things that you've already done to get yourself
on the path to making that resolution happen. And so
if my resolution was to drink more water, first of all,
drinking water right now. So, but I've already looked into
ways to make my own felter at home and things
(26:11):
like that, things that I know will help me meet
that goal, And so I can say, well, I've already
taken up even though it's very cursory and like it's
not it's not maybe, Yeah, I mean its absolutely And
I think it sort of goes back to that other
mantra that you hear a lot of, like celebrating small winds,
because when you take stock of what you've done already,
when you break down a big goal into tiny little
(26:32):
steps and then check those tiny little steps off, even
if it's the first step you're making on a to
do list, or if you're sipping out of your water
bottle right now, check that. That creates more momentum behind you.
And so I think not short changing yourself in acknowledging
the progress you've already started or what makes you already
(26:53):
uniquely qualified to make good on those resolutions, taking stock
of that is important. Yeah, it really can help us
achieve our goals. And what's funny is that very top
of the episode we talked about how powerful perspective. It's
not like one of these punch card holders had a
shorter distance than the other, it was their perspective on
that distance that was changed. This might be kind of
(27:13):
a weird example, but there's this commercial on TV for
credit monitoring service. And something that I like so much
about what this commercial does is rather than targeting people
who are really concerned about their credit and like I've
been monitoring their credit forever because they have good credit
and they want to keep good credit, it's clearly targeting
people who have not been doing that, and so the
idea is to like make it not scary. And the
(27:34):
person in the commercial always says, Okay, so my credit
is not great, but I'm I'm on top of it now.
I'm not just hiding from it now, and that's progress.
And I really love that commercial because, you know, it
highlights the fact that sometimes just making a plan for
how you're going to stay on top of this and
you know, taking a look at it, sometimes that is
a step and should be celebrated and that gets you
(27:55):
on the on the right path. I think that's such
a great example, because I'm times awareness is the first
step in a lot of different goals, and especially money goals.
I think another way that we can get our own
mindset right around resolutions so that it sets us up
for success and not shame is to really think about
(28:15):
how your inner voice can be on your team. So
often that inner voice is full of should like oh,
I should be going to the gym the right way,
like regularly, and all of that other bs that gets
leveled upon us as human beings and especially as women.
I think it was Tiffany Doofu in our episode around
(28:36):
rollover Load Working Mothers who really said it's so critically
important to get crystal clear on what is in your
job description for being a good mother, what obligations you
deem most important to feeling like you're coming through for
the folks in your life, Not the job descriptions that
are floating out there are handed to you from predecessors
or society, but really getting clear on what is important
(28:59):
to you and when you can do that for whatever
resolutions you have and get your inner dialogue on track
or on your side. I think your perception of yourself
while you're in the thick of goal pursuit, while you're
in the slog of making good on those resolutions, can
have a huge impact on motivation and drive. I think
(29:21):
that's so right, and I think it really comes down
to the story that we tell ourselves in our head
about who we are and what it means. And I
think it was the episode around work fails, where we
talked about the difference between saying I'm bad at math
and I failed that math test because I'm a screw up,
and saying I failed that math test because I didn't
study hard enough and if I had been more prepared,
(29:42):
maybe I would have done better. It's in between making
our goals not about who we are, but what we're
doing in our behavior. Absolutely. I think that's Carol Dwex
research around growth mindset versus a fixed trade mindset. Right,
This idea that I'm a screw up or I'm just lazier,
I'm just not a gym person, versus here's what I've
done in the past, here's what I'd like to do
(30:02):
differently moving forward without shame attached to it, which is
easier said than done in a world that really likes
to judge and shame women, especially working mothers, all the
day and time. So I think it's about getting clear
on what's important to you, but also acknowledging your own
inner monologue can be something that helps or hinders you.
(30:23):
I have a good example from this from my own life. Uh,
something about me is that I am notorious for putting
off going to the dentist because I'm terrified of the dentist.
I mean, it's it's awful. Sometimes I cry, and basically
I I it was one of those things where I
had to go and I realized I can only go
to the dentist if I may, if I call and
(30:43):
make an appointment. Some a friend someone is like, did
you make your appointment? They follow up with me, and
then the dentist of receptionist whoever is checking it with
me to be like, Okay, your appointment is on Thursday,
you're gonna come. You're gonna come Otherwise, As it gets
closer and closer, I'm definitely gonna play because I don't
like going. And I once told on one gee, I
wish I could like get a handle on this fear.
It's so irrational. I hate that it takes me this
(31:05):
entire production to go. I I'm an adult. I should
be able to just go. And my friend said, no,
you know what you need to be able to meet
this goal. It just so happens that for you to
go to the dentist, you have to have a friend
make sure you go, and that a receptionist has to
be very vocal with you to make sure that you're
actually going to go and that's okay, it's you don't
have to attach shame to it. It is what it is.
(31:27):
And so for me, I had internalized that I was
this crazy, irrational person because I had to have as
a friend didn't ask me if I was actually gonna go,
I wouldn't go, instead just changing that story in my
head and making that story be about I know what
I need to have for me to actually go to
the dentist, and here's what it is, and here's all
I'm gonna get it, and that is the way that
I go. And that's you being a responsible adult. Yeah, yeah,
(31:50):
I think that's a really excellent reframing of what is
in fact a very responsible set of behaviors because you
know yourself. And if we can shed the shame and
all the should in our inner monologue and beat ourselves
up a little less, we can actually cheer ourselves on
a little more, which again it's easier than done, but
research shows that if you take the negative mantra, whatever
(32:11):
it is that's running through your mind. I know my
little sister zz He, who is now a friend of
the pod and you know guest on the pod in
the past, she used to say to me, Emily, I'm
just lazy. I can't make myself do this. And I
used to say, Isabel, you're not lazy. What is it
that you need to do to change your behavior? What
is it that works for you focusing on the bright
spots and then reframing that sort of negative story that's
(32:34):
in your head into something that frames it in a
more productive, positive and growth oriented way. It's It's one
of those things that I hope our listeners can catch
themselves doing moving forward. It's one of those things that
might be very unconscious until you start paying attention to
how you're talking to yourself, because half the battle ver
is making the unconscious more conscious. A lot of what
(32:54):
we do is totally mindless. A lot of the behaviors
we have, shopping decisions, we ache, purchases, routines right in
and of itself, embodies the idea that it's routine, it's habitual.
It's so hard to change what we're not consciously doing,
and when you really look at what we're not conscious
of doing, it's a pretty wide spectrum. There was this
(33:17):
really interesting article published in the New York Times December
one of last year, now called why Trying new things
is so hard to do. That shed light on this
challenge around changing habits that are so unconscious. And this
was written by an economist who admits in the first line,
I drink a lot of diet coke two leads a day,
(33:40):
which from a health perspective, we're not even going to
touch that. Okay, no shade, no shame there. So that's
almost six cans worth of diet coke. He says, I'm
not proud of the habit, but I really like the
taste of diet coke. And yet, as a frugal economist,
he knows if he were to switch to a generic
brand that savings would add up significantly and over the
(34:01):
course of a lifetime, you could save a whole bunch
of money, which as a frugal economist he would be
interested in doing. And yet he doesn't want to experiment
even for a day, even once he's never sampled generic soda. Well,
what's fascinating is that he goes into how so many
of the choices that we make throughout our lives are
(34:21):
of this kind of habitual variety. He says that human
behaviors are this habitual variety where we're just this is
our habit. This is our thing that we do, and
we're not going to deviate from it, even if we
know it could save us money or time. Think about
things like generic aspirin, where scientists have already said if
you buy the cheap target brand, it's exactly the same
(34:42):
thing as that you know, whatever name brand, people still
don't do it because it's his habitual thing. We get
into this idea of this is what I do, this
is my habit, and that's so hard to break, and
it's it's like a risk aversion. We fear. We have
an outsized fear of the potential being just pointed. When
you go out to eat at your favorite restaurant. I
(35:02):
know my favorite restaurant here in d C. I always
ordered the same thing because you don't want to go
to your favorite restaurant and risk having something that's less
good than your favorite thing on the menu. Right this idea,
we we overestimate the risk and we greatly underestimate the
potential rewards of a little bit of personal experimentation. He
even did a little bit of deviation from routine can
(35:24):
cause you to discover a brand new dishans even better.
It's so true when we were growing up. My mom
always kept this one brand of lotion in the house,
Luba Dorm, And as I got older, I just thought, like,
we are a Luberderm family. We wear Lubater Emotion. This
is the only lotion that that is for us. And
I remember going to CVS ones and they were out,
and I was like, oh, well, I guess do I
(35:44):
get the idea that I would get something else? I
had just in my head was like, I wear this
brand of motion, the lotion that I wear, and I
don't even remember if I bought something else. I just
was like the idea of picking that plunge of buying
something new, something different, just seemed so difficult to do.
You're making so many marketing professionals listening to this podcast
feel very satisfied right now, because it's their jobs to
(36:07):
make you that loyal to a brand, just like this
economist describes in the article, and almost just kind of
becomes part of the fabric of how we think of
ourselves exactly. He goes on to say that quote many
so called choices are not really choices at all. Walking
down the supermarket aisle, I did not make a considered
decision about soda I don't even pause at the generics.
(36:28):
I act without thinking. I automatically grab bottles of diet
coke as I wheel my cart by. So when thinking
about New Year's resolutions and changing behaviors that can be
so hard to change because we are habitual creatures as
human beings, keep in mind that the potential rewards are
greater than you might think for a little bit of
(36:50):
personal experimentation, and the potential risks are often less severe
than we think they'll be, and a little bit of
you know, deviation from our routine can be extremely good
for us. It's just that, you know, making that deviation
stick can be a little harder. And I think that
even goes back to the point that you were making about,
you know, the story that we have in our head.
(37:12):
Even that seems like a habitual behavior that if you
can just snap yourself out of it or catch yourself
before you fall down that rabbit hole of I'm lazy,
it means I suck and this resolution is not gonna
get done and blah blah blah, and like if you
can just stop yourself and pause, you can you can
get out of that. That's the first step, just being
aware and hearing the inner monologue and saying whoa, whoa, whoa.
(37:34):
I'm gonna take that phrasing. I'm gonna take that story
in my head and reframe it. That in and of
itself is a huge achievement and again celebrating small winds.
Sometimes awareness is a first great step in the right direction.
The other way to do it is something you already
alluded to with your brilliant dentist strategy, which is the
last piece of advice that I feel. It is very
(37:56):
stuff Mom never told you, and it reminds me of
our last eisode of is to not go it alone.
I always say this in goal pursuit when it comes
to your career, especially going it alone doesn't get you
there any faster. It's probably a lot less fun, and
not to mention, the research backs up that checking in
with friends or accountability buddies on New Year's resolutions and
(38:20):
goals can boost your chances of actually achieving them by
about thirty three percent according to some of the most
conservative estimates out there. It's also like eighty percent at
more a little more fluffy studies that are out there,
but a thirty three percent improvement on the likelihood of
achieving a goal is well worth it um in my book,
(38:41):
and this refers to some of the recent research done
by Professor Dr Gail Matthews at Dominican University. Yeah, I
found that it can be really difficult for some of
us to ask for help when we need it. But
I like to remember that when you ask a friend
or a colleague or appear for help, you're actually modeling
that it's okay for them to do the same. And
so not only should you be thinking about it for
(39:03):
it being a good idea for you making your own goals,
but you could also be thinking about it in terms
that it can be helpful for others who also have
their own goals. And so if you're in a community
and you are someone who is is okay with asking
for help and asking for a little bit of gentle accountability,
you're making it safe and easier for somebody else to
do the same. I think that is such a great point.
We oftentimes confuse asking for help with defeat, at least
(39:27):
I used to as like a recovering perfectionists. I used
to think, if I can't do it alone, I'll have
to admit my failure and go ask for help. Elsewhere. Now,
when I'm making a list of things I want to
get done or resolutions, one of the questions I ask
myself is who else can help me get there faster?
And therefore it makes the act of asking for help
part of making progress. It's the same thing as making
(39:49):
progress in my book, And it's also way more fun.
It's way less stressful to go it alone. It's way
more fun to co create something awesome with someone you admire. Definitely,
I completely agree. There's as other little wrinkle in the
research that I absolutely love, which is this term called
co indulgence. You're gonna like this bridget. So if you
are feeling like you're having, I don't know, an off day,
(40:12):
Let's say we're trying to eat healthier in the new year,
just as a hypothetical here, and let's say you and
I were walking past Larry's homemade ice cream. Have I
told you this story before? Because I feel like I've
used this example a lot. I use ice cream examples
a lot when I talk about co indulgence. So if
I'm walking past Larry's homemade ice scream in DuPont Circle
(40:32):
alone and I'm like, screw eating healthy, I'm not feeling
like eating healthy, I'm gonna go in and get myself
something delicious here. I might be more likely after that
to feel a little bit of guilt, a little bit like, oh, man,
I did something bad. I indulged when I was supposed
to be eating healthy, And I might be even more
(40:54):
likely to say, well, the day's ruined. I guess I'll
just eat garbage for the rest of the day and
try again tomorrow. Have you ever experienced something like that? Oh? Yeah,
that's when you're when you're running, when you're running late,
and you're like, man, as well get a coffee because
I'm already late. That's you know how I feel about that.
That's a little bit of indulgence. Yeah, you're like, well,
the day's ruined, right, Well, I'll try again garbage for
(41:17):
the rest of the day. Exactly. Now. I love this
a little bit of research because, according to UH folks
in the Journal of Consumer Researches came from Michael Low
and Kelly Hawes. UH. They found that with co indulgence,
instead of solely indulging like I would if I went
so low to get that ice cream, Let's say you
(41:38):
and I were walking past it together and I turned
to you and I said, screw it. I know we're
supposed to be, you know, eating healthier for the new year,
but let's just let's dive in. Let's get some ice cream.
If you and I were to indulge together, three amazing
things are more likely to happen. One, our social bond
will be strengthened because we just went through a little
indulgence together. Too, you're more likely to experience less guilt.
(42:04):
And three because it's a shared indulgence, so it's not
like I'm being a bad person. It's like, oh, we
just did a bad thing, you know, just inherently kind
of more fun exactly and naughty, like oh we did
something bad, skipped class together, Yeah, exactly. And then three,
you're more likely to get back on track faster. So
you're much more likely if you were to indulge alone,
(42:26):
to say screw at the day's ruin, I'll try again tomorrow.
Then if we were to indulge together, and we'd be like, Okay,
we watched an episode of Housewives in the middle of
the day while we were supposed to get this outline
for this episode together. I feel personally at right now
that was like from the headlines there, yes, ripped from
(42:49):
our together headlines as opposed to like if we did
that together and then got it, we'd be more likely
to get it together after that episode. I like that,
and it makes sense because it is like having a
pace car, someone who can help you on track, and
even if you fall behind or have an indulgence now
and then, who's still there to help you get back
(43:09):
to you need to be because you're both in it
together exactly. And so that's my hope for is that
our amazing stuff Mom never told you community and all
the women that I will acknowledge this is the this
is like a very bossed up episode because this is
all the research and all of the tactics and all
of the attainment junkie stuff that I cover at bosst Up.
(43:30):
It's my hope that we as women, especially in can
commit to communal support for one another. We can commit
to whether you're using this fresh start to make new
resolutions or you're gonna make next week your own personal
fresh start for resolutions, that we can come together, ask
(43:51):
for help when we need it, support each other in
the slog that is actually making good on these things,
and have a little patience with ourselves and our inner monologue,
so we can, you know, lift as we climb together. Totally.
I love that keeps coming back as our sort of
unofficial motto for the show. But it's so true, and
I think certainly in the community of stuff mom ever
told you listeners has been personally very very helpful in
(44:14):
my own journey as a podcaster and just overall feminist um.
But yeah, I think embracing that is so important. Absolutely,
And I have to make a shameless plug here for
one second because for folks who do want more of
this kind of research driven goal attainment to do list
loving junkies like me, there is a free tool that
(44:37):
we developed a boss Up called the boss Up Life Tracker,
which you can get for free right now on my website.
We'll link to it in the show notes, and it
really encompasses all of the New Year's resolutions tactics and
hacks that we covered today to help you overcome overwhelm,
overcome role overload. And I feel like the boss of
(44:58):
your year and feel like you've got a community who's
encouraging you each and every stuff of a way to
have fun in a in a communal way. In making
this your best year yet? And now, Smithy listeners, we
want to hear from you. What is your resolution or
are you not making one? Or maybe you'll think about
it and make one later. I mean, it's okay to
(45:18):
be a little loosey goosey if that's how this stuff
gets done for you, if you're a bridget. But either way,
I mean, how do these kinds of goals show up
in your life? Are they things that you like to embrace?
Do you feel weird about them? How have they showed up? Yeah?
Do you love to roll your eyes at New Year's resolutions?
Or or have you already color coded your own planner
for the year? Because that's definitely the boat that I've
(45:41):
fall into right now, and I'm dying to hear where
our listeners come in on this. So let's keep this
conversation going on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You,
And as always, we love getting your emails at mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com. Tho
Hey, this is Emily, and you're listening to stuff mom
never told you. And Happy New Year, Happy New Year.
I am ready, are you? Are you ready for I'm
(00:25):
never quite ready. I'll get there. I'll be ready for
it in like August. I love it. I hope everyone
listening had a wonderful, relaxing, chill holiday break. And I'm
thrilled to be back in y'all's earbuds because we've got
a lot to do in. Some people are calling this
the year of the woman. By the way, have you
seen that? I have seen that. Yeah, I think this
(00:46):
will be the year of the not white man. I
like it. So it's like a good year for getting
clear on what you want to do with this clean
slate that is the brand new year. I guess when
this comes out, it will be what January third, in
the New Year days in is a good time to
(01:07):
get together. Getting together. However, as we start the conversation
today around New Year's resolutions, I want to first acknowledge
that New Year's resolutions have become very uncool, haven't they?
They have, And I actually have to admit that I
don't really I'm not really down with New Year's resolutions.
(01:27):
I think other people should do them, and if it
makes other people feel in control of their where their
year is going, more power to them. They're not for me, okay,
other than the fact that you're the ultimate cool girl.
Why why? Why? Why are New Year's resolutions so passe?
For a lot of reasons. One for me, I think
(01:48):
that I never I never stick with them. There was
one night my resolution was not to burn my tongue
on any hot foods. And I was at a New
Year's Eve party and before that party was over, I
had burned my tongue. Well, technically that means oh wait no,
it was after midnight. Start year with a burnt tongue.
But I was like, dang, I really, I can't get
I can't do him. Um. I try to stick with
(02:09):
something that's really really small and tangible. Um, you know,
I'm going to read a book this year or something
something really dumb and small. Uh. I think that we
should be thinking about getting our stuff together all year round,
and I think that New Year's puts a weird pressure
on it that for me, as soon as it's a
defined thing, I'm less likely to do it. You are
such a rebel. I just love it. It's not gonna happen.
(02:33):
Rebel without a cause over here, I think, bust out
the biker jacket, Bridget, I have one. I know you
know um well, Actually, to be fair, you're in a
very very good company. There's a lot of different pseudo
science thrown around around this time of year about how
like eight percent of people who set New Year's resolutions
don't follow through, or there's another number of eight percent
(02:55):
people actually make it happen. So I totally get it.
I gets It's so funny because as a writer, I've
pitched pieces on New Year's resolutions to major publications and
everyone comes back and says, no, we want an anti
New Year's resolutions piece, not a pro New Year's Resolutions piece.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't write that piece
(03:16):
for you because I'm so into resolutions and this of
course makes me nerdy and uncool. However, I think we're
all used to hearing that from me at this point,
because I really think, especially in light of everything we
talked about in the role Overload series, all the ways
in which women in particular can struggle with the many
(03:37):
different hats we were expected to wear the New Year's
resolutions to me is a proclamation of ownership over your
own destiny. Now do we all own everything about our destiny? No,
but I think it's almost a radical act to sit
down and give yourself the time and give yourself the
effort and focus to say, what would I want to
(04:00):
do with my year if I could do anything? See,
I actually am down with that framing. It's more positive
and less sort of punitive if you don't stick with
this thing you said you were going to do on
January one and you failed in your year. I think
sitting down and having a little bit of intentionality baked
into your life about where you want to where you
want to see yourself, and let yourself fantasize about what
(04:22):
your life could look like. You know what you want,
where you want to be in the next year. I
think that's okay. I just the thing that immediately gets
me going is the idea that if you don't do
X this year, then you've been your year is a
wash and you haven't lived up to your potential. That's
interesting because it really is a framing. It's a perspective, definitely,
(04:42):
and it's up to you, I think, to to define
your own perspective. But I was watching cable TV, which
is not something I do too much of, but yesterday
while I was doing little to no work at all,
and all the weight Watchers commercials are on full blast
right now, all the joint a gym lose ten pounds,
(05:03):
all those sort of services and products that people want
to hawk at you right now because they know that
we are all making the same ten resolutions. Definitely, I
always someone who kind of rolls my eyes whenever things
that start out seeming they're like well intentioned becomes sort
of hyper steeped. And we know you're thinking about getting
(05:25):
your life together, here's a million commercials about why you
should be going to the gym or do winning weight Watchers.
It almost feels like it's exploiting a positive internal thing
that people are feeling to like make them sign up
for a gym membership or something. Um. And so I think,
I whenever when I see the commercials on a loop
as you've just described, on like this again um And
also does make me feel bad because I know I'm
the person who should be probably doing it, and I'm like, oh,
(05:46):
I'm not gonna do it, And then there's me on
the other side of the spectrum who is quite literally
hawking things at people right now who want to be
overachiever list making efficiency junkies like myself. So I take
no offense at the at the very valid point you've
just made. But I also I am laughing over here
(06:06):
because I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing, because
I like the proactivity of getting my stuff together at
the top of the new year. There's something wrong with it,
And I think that you are in good company because
so many people are buying organizational tools and getting their
house cleaned and all of that, like to start the
new year off fresh. I think that's a very very
positive thing. So I don't want to be I don't
(06:28):
want to say that that is a bad impulse at all.
I just I think around this time of year, you
see so much about it, it feels a little bit
weird for me. I also something that one of my
biggest pet peeves, speaking of people who are going to
the gym and weight watchers. I hate how people who
go to the gym regularly the way that you're supposed
to sometimes shame people who are sort of doing it
(06:51):
for the new year's solution, right, Like like Oh, the
gym is going to be full of people who are
just there because it's New Year's I hate that. I
think we shouldn't. So I'm very mindful of not shaming
people who are taking the New Year's plunge and getting organized,
getting a planner, getting their house cleaned, you know, whatever
the thing is they're doing. I don't want to shame them, right,
And so that's it's such an interesting point how New
(07:13):
Year's resolutions have become a very judgmental sting that people
have very strong opinions on. So I just want to
name that as we start this episode. I think it's
clear kind of where we stand a New Year's resolutions,
and that's going to make this conversation even more rich,
I think, I hope. So I like it. I mean,
I'm excited I'm going to resolve for the New Year
(07:33):
that it's going to be a rich conversation. Oh I
like that. Wait, so what are if you did have
to name a single or any real resolution for your
bridget what would it be? Myen resolutions? I mean they're
so dumb. Uh. One is to drink more water. It's
kind of an easy, it's super easy. So it's like
maybe I'll do it, maybe I won't. Another This one
(07:56):
is more serious. It's I'm notoriously bad at email, Like
you text me, fine, if you teach at me, fine,
something about an email. I'm like, oh, i'll do look
us later than I forget. And then it's almost feels
like it's two it's gone too long to respond, and
it's like, now it's almost rude if I do reply.
So I want to reply to emails in a timely manner. Yes,
(08:16):
I just unsubscribed myself from no less than seventy five
newsletters for that very reason. That's a good idea. Maybe
that's a that could be another one. I'm gonna throw
that in the mix. I'll subscribe to list serves and
head letters that don't bring me joy or then I
don't read. I just feel guilty for having them in
my inbox and never reading them. So I'd rather unsubscribe
than not have them at all. That's a good result.
(08:37):
I just switched to inbox from Google to which is
a different email. So I'll have talking more about that. Yeah,
because that's definitely on my list. So would you like
to hear a resolution? I have? Let's hear it. So
this is like an overarching theme. But I want to
meet eighteen my year of fun. I literally worked too
much last year for my own liking, so I'm trying
(08:58):
to prioritize fun all year long. We'll see how long
I left. It's very emily to pencil in and like
calendar out some fun. I bet you have a spreadsheet
that says I already there's already a working fun And
honestly it's like every single month for the year and
a minimum. But I think this is a good way
(09:19):
to look at it. From the bird's eye view. I
have like something extraordinarily fun. I'm looking forward to. What is?
Do you want to share what it is? For this moment?
Is for this quarter, I am going to Columbia, my
mother's country of origin, with my mom. We're flying out
on her sixtieth birthday for a week long trip to
(09:39):
Bogata and then we're backpacking near Santa Martha and we're
gonna go visit some family that I've never met before.
I've never been to Columbia before, and it's going to
be this mother daughter bonding drip and I'm so excited.
That sounds really fun. It's really fun, and it's been.
I've been trying to make that happen for like ten years,
so you're fun it's happening. I like it all right.
I think we should take a quick break, and when
(09:59):
we come back, I want to really dive into the
first and most important reason behind why I think New
Year's resolutions are in fact a good opportunity to be intentional.
As you said, bridget about your new year. We'll be
right back after this quick break, and we're back and
(10:25):
we are talking through New Year's resolutions, and especially thinking
back to the Role Overload series we did towards the
end of last year, I want to acknowledge that if
you are resonating with those episodes and you are feeling like, hell, yeah,
I am a working daughter, or a working mother, or
just a single lady who wants to think critically about
(10:47):
the goals I'm pursuing the roles I am playing the
hats I'm wearing. This is actually a really good time
to make the new year a fresh start. In fact,
a bunch of interesting research around behavioral psychology and how
temporal landmarks like the first of the year or the
(11:08):
first day of the week, the first day of the month,
or the first day of a new season have been
shown to be really salient in terms of sustaining motivation
when pursuing new goals. Catherine Milkman and her co authors
have produced research showing that the fresh start effect is
very real. As it turns out, we are much more
(11:29):
likely to have high motivation and more likely to actually
sustain that motivation when we capitalize on temporal landmarks on
the start of something new. Is basically like you're riding
a wave of motivation which is more likely to be
piqued at the start of a new even psychological landmark.
(11:49):
But what I love about that part of the research
is that it doesn't have to necessarily be tied to
the first of the year. It can be a Monday,
or your birthday or the first of the month. And
I think thinking about your holes in ways that are
tied to some temporal thing makes sense. And I like
the idea that it doesn't just have to be January one,
here's what I'm doing for the year. It can be
(12:10):
anything that feels like a significant temporal landmark in your
life exactly. It could be a birthday. Totally agree. I
think baking into this idea that it can be repeatable
that it can fit any kind of different life, whether
or not something that you're someone that the first of
the year is a big deal for you. I think
it's better than having it be first of the year.
This is your one time to make a new plan,
and if you don't do it, then you suck right well.
(12:31):
What's interesting is that these temporal landmarks are tend to
be days that stand out to you, so they just
have to be meaningful to you to generate that fresh
start feeling, kind of like that blank slate feeling that
really does come up for a lot of us at
the start of the new year. But I also like
to think of this as something that happens every month,
the fresh start that is the top of the month.
(12:53):
I am way more productive and think more strategically about
what I want to get done in a new month
at the top of the month, as opposed to the
middle or the end of a month. Same thing with
the start of a new week. I'm a Monday person.
I like mondays. I know that makes me a weirdo,
but I like the fresh start feeling of hitting the
ground running at the top of a new week. And
(13:13):
what's interesting is researchers think they postulate that these temporal
landmarks tend to be effective because they make us feel
more distant from our past failures. I know, it's kind
of like it's almost like you can presume that I
can be someone new. That's a really positive, aspirational way
(13:36):
of freaking it. I think exactly. Milkman herself rights. The
fresh start effect hinges on the idea that we don't
feel as perfect about our past as we like. We're
always striving to be better, and when we can wipe
out all those failures and look at a clean slate,
it makes us feel more capable and drives us forward.
That's like all those hashtag new year knew me posts
(13:57):
on Instagram. To be clear, I am that bad. I
have not hashtag that just yet, but don't give me
the ideas. The baseline here is if you feel like
the new year is an opportunity for you to psychologically
leave your past failures behind, capitalize on it. And that's
why I like to seize that opportunity because if you
(14:18):
think about it, it it only comes around once a year.
Although I like to do this kind of a thing
on my birthday too. I always think about, like lessons
learned on my birthday from the past year more so
than goals for the for the next year. I like that. Yeah,
but I don't know. I've started this tradition about three
years ago. Brad the Boo and I do an annual
like collective New Year's resolutions list, which is way different
(14:41):
like for like for the couple. Yeah, are you comfortable
sharing one of your collective resolutions? Sure? Um, so we
just did this and it's hanging up at home in
the in the kitchen cabinet that you have to open
to get to the coffee. Well, you're a fund was
on there, because that's kind of a collective one. Make
good use of our companion pass. So this is not
a Southwest ad, but I am a Southwest super user
(15:04):
and last year I traveled a hundred and twenty thousand
miles and earned a companion Pass, which means Brad flies
for free anywhere that I fly anytime we want. So
we want to look back on and say we made
very good use of that companion pass. That's a very
good goal. Yeah. I mean I feel like it's flexible,
you know, it's not like a smart goal, strategic measurable
(15:25):
actiona blah blah blah. But it's a it's a resolution.
It's like that. I like the idea of shared goals
for people that have, you know, shared lives. Yeah, I
think for anybody who has shared lives, even if it's
a house goal with a bunch of roommates or a
family goal, I find that that collective articulation is more
powerful than writing this high stakes lift down for myself
(15:46):
and looking at it and it feeling really daunting and scary.
The bottom line is, capitalize on the fresh start effect
if it works for you. If New Year's didn't feel
like a fresh start for you, start on Monday, or
use the next top of the months that you have,
or if you work the kind of job that has
a season. I have a friend who's a wedding planner,
and so for her, the beginning of wedding season I
forget when she marks it. I want to say it's May,
(16:09):
but for her that marks sort of the beginning of
her professional year. For a lot of folks in politics,
election days and things like that are good temporal markers,
and so I think it's important to remember for your
own life, for your own industry, for whatever you're doing,
and wherever you're at. These temporal markers can be their
own thing that the rest of us don't even have exactly,
and you have to really make them if they don't
(16:30):
exist naturally in your life. So my mom works shift work,
and she'll do twelve hours at a time, three or
four days a week, and there isn't this regularity to
her schedule per se. So sometimes you have to build
that structure in if you want to feel like you
can capitalize on it. You know, if if if it's
not naturally a part of your rhythm. Now, how you
(16:51):
capitalize on the fresh start effect is also super important.
I have a very controversial feeling about vision boards. I'm
wondering what yours might be, Bridget I don't know if
you're a vision board person, could you see me? No,
no shade on them. I have plenty of shade for
(17:12):
vision boards. So here here's what my shade is. It's
not that you know, cutting and pasting or anything is
like essentially basic about it. My beef with vision boards
is that it's not good. According to the research, it
is actually counter productive to over invest in your clarifying
of your destination. The more times you pin your dream
(17:35):
house on a pinterest board instead of focusing on the
plan how you're going to get there, the journey over
the destination. The less mental faculties are left over for
you to focus on the hard part, which is the how.
So I get it. If you're not quite sure what
your vision is, if you're not quite sure what you're
aiming for, you definitely want to spend some time there.
But if you have a pretty solid idea of where
(17:58):
you want to be heading this year, don't overly focus
on the destination. Instead, get busy planning for the journey
to get there. What's fascinating is that some research has
actually shown that an over emphasis of focusing on the
goals alone without focusing on the action plan can make
you feel it sort of tricks your brain into feeling
(18:19):
like you've already achieved them, or like you've already made
significant progress. Spoiler alert, your vision board didn't actually make
any progress in you achieving that vision. I'm so sorry
to break the news, and I'm going to get hate
for this, and I'm ready for it, y'all, but I
have I have a real strong dislike of vision boards
because they can actually take up precious time and effort
(18:41):
that could be focused on the plan. Well, I saw
a great quote, and I hate like inspirational quotes, but
this one I did think, Oh, that that's I'm down with.
That said go to sleep with dreams and wake up
with plans. And I like that because it's good to
have dreams, it's good to visualized dreams. But if you're
not planning for how you're going to get there exactly
like you said, it can feel like you've made significant
(19:02):
investments in a plan when in fact, you just thought
about it and it sounds really nice and it seems
really cool, and like you know, that house that you
want looks great on Pinterest and this and that, but
you haven't actually done the steps to get you closer
to having a plan for how you're going to achieve
it exactly, And it can make you feel like you've
already done something, which might demotivate you from actually working
(19:23):
on the journey. There was some research done where they
took a group of students who had a test that
they were studying for. I think the test was like
a couple of weeks away. They asked one subset one
third of the students to close their eyes and visualize
themselves acing the test. They asked another group, a third
of the student body, to close their eyes, visualize themselves
(19:46):
acing the test, and then write like one or two
sentences for how they were going to do that, therefore
provoking them to really make a plan. And then the
other third they did nothing at all, no exercise, no visualization,
no planning. That's the control group. Which of those three
groups do you think did the best on the test?
Definitely the group that wrote about their plans right, exactly
(20:07):
as one might imagine. However, the most fascinating part of
this research is that the control group they are performed
the group that was told to visualize success without planning. See,
that doesn't surprise me at all, mostly because it's how
I live my life. I'm not going to plan for this,
and it kind of might go okay, like, is not ya?
(20:32):
That is not at all the conclusion I'm going. But
what's fascinating is that visualizing success alone without the second
more important part of how you're going to make that happen,
can be worse than not visualizing at all. It really
takes me back to my political organizing days, when you're
asking people to make plans for how they will get
to the polls. And so if you say will you
(20:54):
vote for X y Z candidate and they're like great, yes,
If you say okay, great, how are you getting to
the polls and you make them think about it, they're
much more likely to actually vote if they even spend
thirty seconds saying while I'm going to take the bus
at my lunch break to go vote. Yes, If they
just say yes, I'll vote for X y Z candidate,
they're less likely to actually follow through because they haven't
even visualized themselves taking that action exactly, because it's not
(21:17):
always the intention that's not there, it's the plan, and
lives are busy. People are busy. I think that's such
a great example. And by doing that mental exercise like
you just described, it gives the voter, or really anyone
with a goal, the opportunity to predict and overcome roadblocks
before they arrive. So if you had asked me if
(21:38):
I was going out to vote, and I said yes,
I'm gonna take the bus, it might be in that
very moment that I realized, oh wait, I've moved since
the last time I voted. I actually don't know where
my pulling location is. It might help me think about
for the first time, and it spur me to foresee
that I have a challenge that I wouldn't have otherwise
foreseen and could have prevented me from voting. So it's it.
(22:00):
It provides the mental opportunity for you to predict a
roadblock and predict an obstacle. Why are you smiling at
me like that? Am I geeking out now? That that
was just a good point? I was just I was
just like, OK, that's a good point. I think we
should talk a little bit more about different obstacles and
(22:20):
how you can overcome them to meet our goals. After
a quick break and we're back just talking through some
ways that we can power through the obstacles that are
standing in the way between us and our New Year's goals.
And one of them something that I totally identify with
(22:40):
is even though you've got a clear goal, even though
you're you have a plan for how you're gonna get there,
it's still feeling sort of sluggish and unmotivated when it
comes to actually putting that plan into motion. Totally. I mean,
New Year's resolutions wouldn't be what they are unless they
were hard, right, Like goal attainment is tricky. That's why
there's such a wealth of research around them and products
(23:02):
and services to help people make them happen. Because it's
not that setting goals is hard, because people love setting goals,
myself included. It's sustaining your motivation that gets tricky. And
our bodies naturally kind of operate on a rhythm, and
so does our motivation. We get very excited at the
beginning of fresh starts, and of course we get excited
(23:23):
when we're close to the finish line, but it's the
slog in between that can be not exactly motivating. But
I found this one incredible little trick that has been
really helpful to myself personally, but also fascinating when it
comes to business cases for it, and the idea is
to give yourself a head start. This comes right out
(23:45):
of one of my favorite books, Switched by Chip and
Dan Heath, all about how to Change when Change Is Hard,
which is one of the books that I completely geek
out about when it comes to behavior change in psychology
and cognitive science. So in their book they give the
six sample of a car wash that used loyalty cards
to try to create repeat customers. And again, this is
(24:06):
a business case, but I think it can be absolutely
applied to your personal goals, resolutions, and life at large.
One set of customers were given a punch car that
needed ten stamps or whatever to get a free car wash,
whereas another set of customers that the same car wash
was given this card with twelve stamps to get but
(24:26):
they were already given two stamps when they were handed
the card. So that second group of customers were given
the sensation that they kind of had a free start.
They had a sense of investment, like they've been already
given a gift of being ahead of the curve. They've
been given a head start. Well, that makes perfect sense
to me. It's that feeling of when you do a
(24:47):
to do list, when you cross off the first thing
because you've already done it. You're like, oh, I'm while
out of my way, even though it's a gimme, it's
a freebe I do that all the time. So if
you're making a list, number one, make list, doing it
right now done. Sometimes I make it to do list
just because I've done something I want to cross off,
you know, I mean, I just said the first thing
(25:07):
of the day, should I should make a hole to
do list? And across that went on. Yeah, it's iun silly,
but these little head starts really give us that sensation
in our brain of that feeling of completion, so you
can move on to the next thing. I think it
sets yourself up for success. Right. What's interesting is even
though both of those groups have the same distance to
the goal, the response was significantly higher for the group
(25:27):
with a pre punched headstart card. So your motivation is
spurred on by progress itself. It's this idea that progress
begets progress. Progress is in and of itself, a motivation booster.
So the idea is to give yourself a head start
wherever you can, however you can to show your own momentum,
(25:49):
because that momentum will help you move forward. I think
specifically applying that to New Year's resolutions, you can think
about the things that you've already done to get yourself
on the path to making that resolution happen. And so
if my resolution was to drink more water, first of all,
drinking water right now. So, but I've already looked into
ways to make my own felter at home and things
(26:11):
like that, things that I know will help me meet
that goal, And so I can say, well, I've already
taken up even though it's very cursory and like it's
not it's not maybe, Yeah, I mean its absolutely And
I think it sort of goes back to that other
mantra that you hear a lot of, like celebrating small winds,
because when you take stock of what you've done already,
when you break down a big goal into tiny little
(26:32):
steps and then check those tiny little steps off, even
if it's the first step you're making on a to
do list, or if you're sipping out of your water
bottle right now, check that. That creates more momentum behind you.
And so I think not short changing yourself in acknowledging
the progress you've already started or what makes you already
(26:53):
uniquely qualified to make good on those resolutions, taking stock
of that is important. Yeah, it really can help us
achieve our goals. And what's funny is that very top
of the episode we talked about how powerful perspective. It's
not like one of these punch card holders had a
shorter distance than the other, it was their perspective on
that distance that was changed. This might be kind of
(27:13):
a weird example, but there's this commercial on TV for
credit monitoring service. And something that I like so much
about what this commercial does is rather than targeting people
who are really concerned about their credit and like I've
been monitoring their credit forever because they have good credit
and they want to keep good credit, it's clearly targeting
people who have not been doing that, and so the
idea is to like make it not scary. And the
(27:34):
person in the commercial always says, Okay, so my credit
is not great, but I'm I'm on top of it now.
I'm not just hiding from it now, and that's progress.
And I really love that commercial because, you know, it
highlights the fact that sometimes just making a plan for
how you're going to stay on top of this and
you know, taking a look at it, sometimes that is
a step and should be celebrated and that gets you
(27:55):
on the on the right path. I think that's such
a great example, because I'm times awareness is the first
step in a lot of different goals, and especially money goals.
I think another way that we can get our own
mindset right around resolutions so that it sets us up
for success and not shame is to really think about
(28:15):
how your inner voice can be on your team. So
often that inner voice is full of should like oh,
I should be going to the gym the right way,
like regularly, and all of that other bs that gets
leveled upon us as human beings and especially as women.
I think it was Tiffany Doofu in our episode around
(28:36):
rollover Load Working Mothers who really said it's so critically
important to get crystal clear on what is in your
job description for being a good mother, what obligations you
deem most important to feeling like you're coming through for
the folks in your life, Not the job descriptions that
are floating out there are handed to you from predecessors
or society, but really getting clear on what is important
(28:59):
to you and when you can do that for whatever
resolutions you have and get your inner dialogue on track
or on your side. I think your perception of yourself
while you're in the thick of goal pursuit, while you're
in the slog of making good on those resolutions, can
have a huge impact on motivation and drive. I think
(29:21):
that's so right, and I think it really comes down
to the story that we tell ourselves in our head
about who we are and what it means. And I
think it was the episode around work fails, where we
talked about the difference between saying I'm bad at math
and I failed that math test because I'm a screw up,
and saying I failed that math test because I didn't
study hard enough and if I had been more prepared,
(29:42):
maybe I would have done better. It's in between making
our goals not about who we are, but what we're
doing in our behavior. Absolutely. I think that's Carol Dwex
research around growth mindset versus a fixed trade mindset. Right,
This idea that I'm a screw up or I'm just lazier,
I'm just not a gym person, versus here's what I've
done in the past, here's what I'd like to do
(30:02):
differently moving forward without shame attached to it, which is
easier said than done in a world that really likes
to judge and shame women, especially working mothers, all the
day and time. So I think it's about getting clear
on what's important to you, but also acknowledging your own
inner monologue can be something that helps or hinders you.
(30:23):
I have a good example from this from my own life. Uh,
something about me is that I am notorious for putting
off going to the dentist because I'm terrified of the dentist.
I mean, it's it's awful. Sometimes I cry, and basically
I I it was one of those things where I
had to go and I realized I can only go
to the dentist if I may, if I call and
(30:43):
make an appointment. Some a friend someone is like, did
you make your appointment? They follow up with me, and
then the dentist of receptionist whoever is checking it with
me to be like, Okay, your appointment is on Thursday,
you're gonna come. You're gonna come Otherwise, As it gets
closer and closer, I'm definitely gonna play because I don't
like going. And I once told on one gee, I
wish I could like get a handle on this fear.
It's so irrational. I hate that it takes me this
(31:05):
entire production to go. I I'm an adult. I should
be able to just go. And my friend said, no,
you know what you need to be able to meet
this goal. It just so happens that for you to
go to the dentist, you have to have a friend
make sure you go, and that a receptionist has to
be very vocal with you to make sure that you're
actually going to go and that's okay, it's you don't
have to attach shame to it. It is what it is.
(31:27):
And so for me, I had internalized that I was
this crazy, irrational person because I had to have as
a friend didn't ask me if I was actually gonna go,
I wouldn't go, instead just changing that story in my
head and making that story be about I know what
I need to have for me to actually go to
the dentist, and here's what it is, and here's all
I'm gonna get it, and that is the way that
I go. And that's you being a responsible adult. Yeah, yeah,
(31:50):
I think that's a really excellent reframing of what is
in fact a very responsible set of behaviors because you
know yourself. And if we can shed the shame and
all the should in our inner monologue and beat ourselves
up a little less, we can actually cheer ourselves on
a little more, which again it's easier than done, but
research shows that if you take the negative mantra, whatever
(32:11):
it is that's running through your mind. I know my
little sister zz He, who is now a friend of
the pod and you know guest on the pod in
the past, she used to say to me, Emily, I'm
just lazy. I can't make myself do this. And I
used to say, Isabel, you're not lazy. What is it
that you need to do to change your behavior? What
is it that works for you focusing on the bright
spots and then reframing that sort of negative story that's
(32:34):
in your head into something that frames it in a
more productive, positive and growth oriented way. It's It's one
of those things that I hope our listeners can catch
themselves doing moving forward. It's one of those things that
might be very unconscious until you start paying attention to
how you're talking to yourself, because half the battle ver
is making the unconscious more conscious. A lot of what
(32:54):
we do is totally mindless. A lot of the behaviors
we have, shopping decisions, we ache, purchases, routines right in
and of itself, embodies the idea that it's routine, it's habitual.
It's so hard to change what we're not consciously doing,
and when you really look at what we're not conscious
of doing, it's a pretty wide spectrum. There was this
(33:17):
really interesting article published in the New York Times December
one of last year, now called why Trying new things
is so hard to do. That shed light on this
challenge around changing habits that are so unconscious. And this
was written by an economist who admits in the first line,
I drink a lot of diet coke two leads a day,
(33:40):
which from a health perspective, we're not even going to
touch that. Okay, no shade, no shame there. So that's
almost six cans worth of diet coke. He says, I'm
not proud of the habit, but I really like the
taste of diet coke. And yet, as a frugal economist,
he knows if he were to switch to a generic
brand that savings would add up significantly and over the
(34:01):
course of a lifetime, you could save a whole bunch
of money, which as a frugal economist he would be
interested in doing. And yet he doesn't want to experiment
even for a day, even once he's never sampled generic soda. Well,
what's fascinating is that he goes into how so many
of the choices that we make throughout our lives are
(34:21):
of this kind of habitual variety. He says that human
behaviors are this habitual variety where we're just this is
our habit. This is our thing that we do, and
we're not going to deviate from it, even if we
know it could save us money or time. Think about
things like generic aspirin, where scientists have already said if
you buy the cheap target brand, it's exactly the same
(34:42):
thing as that you know, whatever name brand, people still
don't do it because it's his habitual thing. We get
into this idea of this is what I do, this
is my habit, and that's so hard to break, and
it's it's like a risk aversion. We fear. We have
an outsized fear of the potential being just pointed. When
you go out to eat at your favorite restaurant. I
(35:02):
know my favorite restaurant here in d C. I always
ordered the same thing because you don't want to go
to your favorite restaurant and risk having something that's less
good than your favorite thing on the menu. Right this idea,
we we overestimate the risk and we greatly underestimate the
potential rewards of a little bit of personal experimentation. He
even did a little bit of deviation from routine can
(35:24):
cause you to discover a brand new dishans even better.
It's so true when we were growing up. My mom
always kept this one brand of lotion in the house,
Luba Dorm, And as I got older, I just thought, like,
we are a Luberderm family. We wear Lubater Emotion. This
is the only lotion that that is for us. And
I remember going to CVS ones and they were out,
and I was like, oh, well, I guess do I
(35:44):
get the idea that I would get something else? I
had just in my head was like, I wear this
brand of motion, the lotion that I wear, and I
don't even remember if I bought something else. I just
was like the idea of picking that plunge of buying
something new, something different, just seemed so difficult to do.
You're making so many marketing professionals listening to this podcast
feel very satisfied right now, because it's their jobs to
(36:07):
make you that loyal to a brand, just like this
economist describes in the article, and almost just kind of
becomes part of the fabric of how we think of
ourselves exactly. He goes on to say that quote many
so called choices are not really choices at all. Walking
down the supermarket aisle, I did not make a considered
decision about soda I don't even pause at the generics.
(36:28):
I act without thinking. I automatically grab bottles of diet
coke as I wheel my cart by. So when thinking
about New Year's resolutions and changing behaviors that can be
so hard to change because we are habitual creatures as
human beings, keep in mind that the potential rewards are
greater than you might think for a little bit of
(36:50):
personal experimentation, and the potential risks are often less severe
than we think they'll be, and a little bit of
you know, deviation from our routine can be extremely good
for us. It's just that, you know, making that deviation
stick can be a little harder. And I think that
even goes back to the point that you were making about,
you know, the story that we have in our head.
(37:12):
Even that seems like a habitual behavior that if you
can just snap yourself out of it or catch yourself
before you fall down that rabbit hole of I'm lazy,
it means I suck and this resolution is not gonna
get done and blah blah blah, and like if you
can just stop yourself and pause, you can you can
get out of that. That's the first step, just being
aware and hearing the inner monologue and saying whoa, whoa, whoa.
(37:34):
I'm gonna take that phrasing. I'm gonna take that story
in my head and reframe it. That in and of
itself is a huge achievement and again celebrating small winds.
Sometimes awareness is a first great step in the right direction.
The other way to do it is something you already
alluded to with your brilliant dentist strategy, which is the
last piece of advice that I feel. It is very
(37:56):
stuff Mom never told you, and it reminds me of
our last eisode of is to not go it alone.
I always say this in goal pursuit when it comes
to your career, especially going it alone doesn't get you
there any faster. It's probably a lot less fun, and
not to mention, the research backs up that checking in
with friends or accountability buddies on New Year's resolutions and
(38:20):
goals can boost your chances of actually achieving them by
about thirty three percent according to some of the most
conservative estimates out there. It's also like eighty percent at
more a little more fluffy studies that are out there,
but a thirty three percent improvement on the likelihood of
achieving a goal is well worth it um in my book,
(38:41):
and this refers to some of the recent research done
by Professor Dr Gail Matthews at Dominican University. Yeah, I
found that it can be really difficult for some of
us to ask for help when we need it. But
I like to remember that when you ask a friend
or a colleague or appear for help, you're actually modeling
that it's okay for them to do the same. And
so not only should you be thinking about it for
(39:03):
it being a good idea for you making your own goals,
but you could also be thinking about it in terms
that it can be helpful for others who also have
their own goals. And so if you're in a community
and you are someone who is is okay with asking
for help and asking for a little bit of gentle accountability,
you're making it safe and easier for somebody else to
do the same. I think that is such a great point.
We oftentimes confuse asking for help with defeat, at least
(39:27):
I used to as like a recovering perfectionists. I used
to think, if I can't do it alone, I'll have
to admit my failure and go ask for help. Elsewhere. Now,
when I'm making a list of things I want to
get done or resolutions, one of the questions I ask
myself is who else can help me get there faster?
And therefore it makes the act of asking for help
part of making progress. It's the same thing as making
(39:49):
progress in my book, And it's also way more fun.
It's way less stressful to go it alone. It's way
more fun to co create something awesome with someone you admire. Definitely,
I completely agree. There's as other little wrinkle in the
research that I absolutely love, which is this term called
co indulgence. You're gonna like this bridget. So if you
are feeling like you're having, I don't know, an off day,
(40:12):
Let's say we're trying to eat healthier in the new year,
just as a hypothetical here, and let's say you and
I were walking past Larry's homemade ice cream. Have I
told you this story before? Because I feel like I've
used this example a lot. I use ice cream examples
a lot when I talk about co indulgence. So if
I'm walking past Larry's homemade ice scream in DuPont Circle
(40:32):
alone and I'm like, screw eating healthy, I'm not feeling
like eating healthy, I'm gonna go in and get myself
something delicious here. I might be more likely after that
to feel a little bit of guilt, a little bit like, oh, man,
I did something bad. I indulged when I was supposed
to be eating healthy, And I might be even more
(40:54):
likely to say, well, the day's ruined. I guess I'll
just eat garbage for the rest of the day and
try again tomorrow. Have you ever experienced something like that? Oh? Yeah,
that's when you're when you're running, when you're running late,
and you're like, man, as well get a coffee because
I'm already late. That's you know how I feel about that.
That's a little bit of indulgence. Yeah, you're like, well,
the day's ruined, right, Well, I'll try again garbage for
(41:17):
the rest of the day. Exactly. Now. I love this
a little bit of research because, according to UH folks
in the Journal of Consumer Researches came from Michael Low
and Kelly Hawes. UH. They found that with co indulgence,
instead of solely indulging like I would if I went
so low to get that ice cream, Let's say you
(41:38):
and I were walking past it together and I turned
to you and I said, screw it. I know we're
supposed to be, you know, eating healthier for the new year,
but let's just let's dive in. Let's get some ice cream.
If you and I were to indulge together, three amazing
things are more likely to happen. One, our social bond
will be strengthened because we just went through a little
indulgence together. Too, you're more likely to experience less guilt.
(42:04):
And three because it's a shared indulgence, so it's not
like I'm being a bad person. It's like, oh, we
just did a bad thing, you know, just inherently kind
of more fun exactly and naughty, like oh we did
something bad, skipped class together, Yeah, exactly. And then three,
you're more likely to get back on track faster. So
you're much more likely if you were to indulge alone,
(42:26):
to say screw at the day's ruin, I'll try again tomorrow.
Then if we were to indulge together, and we'd be like, Okay,
we watched an episode of Housewives in the middle of
the day while we were supposed to get this outline
for this episode together. I feel personally at right now
that was like from the headlines there, yes, ripped from
(42:49):
our together headlines as opposed to like if we did
that together and then got it, we'd be more likely
to get it together after that episode. I like that,
and it makes sense because it is like having a
pace car, someone who can help you on track, and
even if you fall behind or have an indulgence now
and then, who's still there to help you get back
(43:09):
to you need to be because you're both in it
together exactly. And so that's my hope for is that
our amazing stuff Mom never told you community and all
the women that I will acknowledge this is the this
is like a very bossed up episode because this is
all the research and all of the tactics and all
of the attainment junkie stuff that I cover at bosst Up.
(43:30):
It's my hope that we as women, especially in can
commit to communal support for one another. We can commit
to whether you're using this fresh start to make new
resolutions or you're gonna make next week your own personal
fresh start for resolutions, that we can come together, ask
(43:51):
for help when we need it, support each other in
the slog that is actually making good on these things,
and have a little patience with ourselves and our inner monologue,
so we can, you know, lift as we climb together. Totally.
I love that keeps coming back as our sort of
unofficial motto for the show. But it's so true, and
I think certainly in the community of stuff mom ever
told you listeners has been personally very very helpful in
(44:14):
my own journey as a podcaster and just overall feminist um.
But yeah, I think embracing that is so important. Absolutely,
And I have to make a shameless plug here for
one second because for folks who do want more of
this kind of research driven goal attainment to do list
loving junkies like me, there is a free tool that
(44:37):
we developed a boss Up called the boss Up Life Tracker,
which you can get for free right now on my website.
We'll link to it in the show notes, and it
really encompasses all of the New Year's resolutions tactics and
hacks that we covered today to help you overcome overwhelm,
overcome role overload. And I feel like the boss of
(44:58):
your year and feel like you've got a community who's
encouraging you each and every stuff of a way to
have fun in a in a communal way. In making
this your best year yet? And now, Smithy listeners, we
want to hear from you. What is your resolution or
are you not making one? Or maybe you'll think about
it and make one later. I mean, it's okay to
(45:18):
be a little loosey goosey if that's how this stuff
gets done for you, if you're a bridget. But either way,
I mean, how do these kinds of goals show up
in your life? Are they things that you like to embrace?
Do you feel weird about them? How have they showed up? Yeah?
Do you love to roll your eyes at New Year's resolutions?
Or or have you already color coded your own planner
for the year? Because that's definitely the boat that I've
(45:41):
fall into right now, and I'm dying to hear where
our listeners come in on this. So let's keep this
conversation going on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You,
And as always, we love getting your emails at mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com. Tho
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
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