Ep # 15: New Year's Resolutions are crap.

Hello! and welcome back to yet another episode of my podcast. In today's episode, let's look at the trend called New Year's Resolution. What can you do instead? How you can sky-rocket the possibility of following through with your resolution. Although a bit differently. So, let's dive in to find out.
 
 It's time to have a word with me, Rajive Dhavan. 
 
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Rajive Dhavn

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the year 2023 because it's the beginning of the year today. Let's talk about new year's resolutions. It's that season, isn't it? But what's my view on New Year's resolutions? Well, I personally think that New Year's resolutions are just crap. Why? I think so we'll discuss it later on.

So it's time to have a word with me, Rajive Dhavan. See you on the other side of the intro Music.

Well, personally, I feel New Year's resolutions are more like a marketing gimmick, probably. They're also used to sell some books, some planners and some stuff, uh, that people will purchase to keep up to or live up to their new year. Re. But there are a few questions that you can ask yourself, and in this episode, what we'll do is, well, we'll talk about four aspects of this new year resolution, and then we'll also look at what you can do instead.

What would be more helpful? So the first big question that I have, I always had, is if you're serious about any resolution, why would you wait until the 1st of January to take it up? Why would you not just start it now, today, in this very moment? Well, in my limited capacity, the message that it gives is that you're not so very serious about it, and in most scenarios, barring some exceptions, that's the reason you've put it to the 1st of January.

The next thing is that New Year's resolution is just a fad for most people. I'll take it up because it's trending. So I need to create some kind of Instagram content to talk about the resolution that I'm taking up, and, uh, that is probably the only reason I'm taking up something. Unfortunately, most people drop out midway.

A lot of them don't even last till the end of January. Then why bother to start? If you do want to take up a new habit or start something new, you can always do it today. Do it now. Even if you're unsure whether you'll be able to follow it through, at least you'll not waste your time until the 1st of January.

Now, I am not claiming that I do everything right now and I don't have any resolutions, and I don't wait until the 1st of January, but it's something that I just gave a thought, and I felt it makes sense for us to start now and make that little progress that helps us move ahead in life in any aspect.

While I've never been a fan of resolutions in the first place, there are certain things that I learned and figured out by observing people, reading, et cetera, and that is what I'd like to share with you. So the first thing is that any resolution should be something that comes from within. A lot of us have a rebound because something has happened.

I'll do this because something has happened. This is my resolution. Now, if that's a bigger sense of purpose, it's fine, but if it's a small thing that happened and you're trying to build a resolution around it, then I doubt you would last long. The second thing is, for instance, getting fitter, reading more books, taking time off and making more money.

All these resolutions are great, but unless there's a bigger purpose attached to them, I don't think we would be able to follow through with them for long. Here's what I think will be a lot more helpful. New Year resolutions should be replaced with New year reflection. Taking time to look at the year gone by will help us better evaluate ourselves.

It'll also help us look at our achievements and areas of improvement in a more objective fashion. Did you get better at something? Did you struggle with something? These are the big questions one should be asking themselves. Introspection is the. And the final thing is, what if you didn't live up to your expectations?

Well, it's okay. You're not alone. I didn't live up to my expectations either that I had from the previous year, 2022, but if I'm going to be overloaded by this reality, I'll not be able to improve anything in the future. I'll end up killing every possibility of any improvement, and history will repeat. The same thing will happen in the year 2023 as.

So I'd rather take time off and not think about what I won or lost, what I improved and what I did not, are the questions I ask. Being competitive is great. Wanting to achieve greater things in life is also cool, but to be sucked in by the rat race and not have any time to reflect on things and look at stuff with a very myopic vision is something that will be detrimental to all of us.

We need to be comfortable with the idea that we, for some reason, could not make an improvement in an area of life that we really wanted to or we lost somewhere. My resolution since the October of 2022, for instance, has been to be consistent with my podcasts. Even if they're not so great, I'm okay. I know that if I am consistent with it, I will certainly make small little progress and get better with time.

I am not fighting the "perfection" war. I am not fighting or getting into the rat race, and that's because I don't want to lose focus on my core purpose, which is to empower people, build a resilient community, to help people look at uncommon perspectives as well. But does that mean that we should not have goals in life?

Well, no, that's not what I am advocating. You need to have goals. You should have your plans, and you should give it your best shot. But will you achieve every single goal in every single aspect of life? Well, that is not guaranteed all the time, and that should not become the whole purpose or the core of your existence because then it'll not let you sleep in peace.

For those who get too worked up with all these goals and race and achievements and accomplishments and trying to be the best version of the. What you can do is just look at small, tiny goals, and set up small, tiny milestones, which could be monthly or even weekly, depending on what you do, what your profession is, and what your personal life demands from you.

A little time to sit down and reflect on why you could not reach a milestone and what you can do to get better is a lot more powerful than just sitting down and sulking that you were unable to do something. And even if you've set up smaller milestones for yourself, there will be a situation where you might not be able to meet those as well, but you don't need to beat yourself for it.

Some hits and some misses will always, always be there in every aspect of our life. So the name of the game here is balance. It's important that one should know when to swim against the tide and when to swim with the tide as well because swimming with the tide is also extremely important and extremely normal.

Let's look at normalizing. You don't always need to swim against the tide to achieve great things in life. Yes, it helps. Yes, it's great, but sometimes you're not in the mindset to do it, and that's something one needs to understand and accept. Also, when I mentioned that, you know, we should replace the word New Year resolution with New Year reflection, I did not mean that we should live in the past.

That is not what I'm trying to communicate. The idea is to just have an objective reflection on things that have happened in the past year and probably learn a few lessons from them. But nowhere am I trying to communicate that you have to live there and not move on. So having goals is equally important, but tying yourself up completely in terms of life and death with the goals could sometimes be a lot more damaging than one can possibly imagine.

One of the most amazing books that I've ever read is called Do Nothing by my favourite author, Keith j Murnigham. And I feel that the content of that book is extremely synonymous with what we have been discussing here. The book talks about exploring the idea that our focus on being productive all the time is making us less effective because of how little rest we get.

Identifying how the consequences of overworking ourselves and the benefits of taking time off make a compelling argument that we should spend more time doing nothing. And before we close, I'd also like to make a small dedication of this episode to the author himself, who is no more in the world. He's been one of my role models.

He's been somebody I've interacted closely with and learned a lot from, and he's also somewhere been responsible for my journey so far. With this, we come to the end of this episode. As always, I hope you liked this piece of content, and if you did, please share, subscribe, and rate the episode. I am sure you will positively impact someone.

Thank you.