Welcome to February
How are you doing on those New Year’s resolutions? Have you started losing those pesky 5/10/25/50 lbs yet? Have you turned into the gym rat you knew was living in you all along? How about decreasing your time wasting on social media?
These are just a few of the resolutions my friends and patients have told me they planned to work on at the turn of the year. But, the stats show 80% of people fail at keeping their resolutions by the second week of February, and only 9% actually make it through the rest of year. That’s a 91% failure rate overall!
As a self-admitted overachiever, I’ve actually hated the idea of resolutions. Why would I wait until the beginning of the next year to start achieving my goals? I’ve been setting goals left and right for as long as I can remember! This means I’ve also been spacing out my failures throughout the year instead of going through one fell sweep in January.
It’s all about pacing myself and sprinkling disappointment throughout the year.
In all seriousness though, I do think there is benefit in striving to be your better self, as long as you don’t beat yourself up by telling yourself you are not enough in your current state.
In December, Nick (not his real name, but he does remind me of old St. Nick!) came in to see me in clinic. He had an enlarging benign fatty tumor called a lipoma growing out of his upper back, and it had grown to the point to where he felt it deserved a name – Quasimodo. For those who don’t remember this Disney character, Quasimodo was the hunchback of Notre Dame who was ostracized for his physical deformities.
“It’s really bothering me, doc. I can’t even sit in chairs that have backs now!”
“Well, given the size, I think the next step would be to send you to plastic surgery to see what they recommend.”
“Plastic surgery, you say? Do you think they can cut off my extra 150 lbs while they’re at it??”
He said it in a laughing manner, but there was no mirth in his voice. I glanced at him and saw the jeweled eye of his dragon tattoo glimmer at me. This was a man who told me when he showed up with his new tattoo at 65+, “Meh, I’m retired! I can do whatever the hell I want! I don’t care what people think.”
“You know, even if they cut off the 150 lbs, that’s just a quick fix. If we don’t address what brought you here, it’ll just come back.”
“I know… and I know you see me in your schedule and wonder why I keep coming back because I never do what you tell me to. But I LOVE food! I can’t help eating my sweets! I can’t stop sneaking in my late night snacks! Hey, I know!! If you could just sew my mouth shut so I could only drink green smoothies out of a straw, I would be all set. Fool proof! Then I couldn’t sabotage myself.”
“Wow… that’s really intense! And that’s no way to live.”
“Yes, well, this is no way to live. I’m breathing like a fat person. Don’t look at me like that.. you know what I mean. If you closed your eyes and listened, you’d know just how fat I was by how heavy I’m breathing. It’s disgusting.”
In this moment, I realized I had never heard Nick say anything nice about himself. It was just one self-deprecating remark after another. He tried to be humorous, but he was always the butt of his jokes. I was appalled.
“Listen, you turn to food because it makes you happy and it’s what is comfortable. And we can talk about how to change these habits, but change needs to come from a place other than self-loathing. You need to do this because you love yourself, not because you’re disgusted by your body. Now say something nice about yourself.”
He stayed silent for the longest time. He couldn’t find one thing he liked about himself. Finally he came up with,
“I guess I make cool tattoo choices.”
The problem with resolutions
How many of us set goals and resolutions coming at it from the wrong angle?
How many of us have stared at ourselves in the mirror, pulled on that pooch and said, “Eww… gross. I’m such a fat slob. I need to work on this”? Who else has lost themselves continuously scrolling and clicking on random things on the internet, to emerge hours later feeling unaccomplished and regret laden for not having gone to the gym instead/read that book you’ve always wanted to/spend time with your friends and family? We think to ourselves, “Here you go again.. just wasting your life away. Why can’t you be better?”
We walk away setting goals with the best intentions, but in the process chip away at our self-worth leaving nothing but a self that is broken and beyond repair.
Changing the approach
When I see babies in the clinic, I love telling parents what to expect in the coming months. At 4 months, a baby should start the process of rolling, by 7 months, he/she should start being able to sit without support and by 11-12 months, start flirting with the idea of walking. If they haven’t started to do these things yet by their prospective ages, do I tell their parents to yell at their children and say, “You’re not trying hard enough! What are you, stupid??”
Absolutely not! We talk about helping their babies learn how to do these things with lots of positive reinforcement. This is not a difficult sell – parents do these things happily because it comes from a place of love and wanting their children to develop into functioning adults.
For some reason, we’ve stopped using this approach for adults. In adulthood, we expect that we should know by now how to live a perfect life. But this is a complete lie. Nothing magical happens after the age of 18, 30 or 50 that all of a sudden we just figure out how things work. In fact, I see several 50-60 year old people who still are trying to figure out this whole adulting thing.
We are not static beings – we are constantly changing, learning and evolving. It’s just not as obvious as it is when you’re a child. So why do we choose to tell ourselves that our baseline is broken, and therefore that’s why we must change? What if we supported ourselves the way we would a child – with love and support?
Change the script.
Nick and I worked on finding his reasons to lose weight that didn’t involve any self-disparaging comments.
“I’m losing weight so I don’t sound like a fat man anymore” turned into:
- “I’m looking forward to walking my dog for at least 2 blocks”
- “I’m going to actually be able to play with my grandson at the park instead of watching him from the bench”
- “I’ll be able to go sightseeing in Europe with my wife without being winded, which is one of things I was looking forward to in retirement”
You could see the excitement grow as he shifted his focus from the things he couldn’t do, to things he could. He was looking forward to bettering his health because this meant he was no longer sitting in his armchair day in, day out, just waiting to die.
Motivation is much more powerful coming from a place of hope, rather than a place of self-belittlement.
I’ve heard the most awful things said by people in reference to themselves! We would never dare say these things to anyone else, but for some reason it’s ok to put ourselves down constantly. Resolutions and goals are just a way to “positively” frame these thoughts in a socially acceptable way.
It’s time to stop.
It’s time to practice self-compassion.
It’s time to change the script.
How will you do this today?