I’m back in the States for the holidays and couldn’t be more excited to be reunited with friends and family.
I cherish this increasingly rare time with my loved ones every year. Our traditions — ranging from a 30 person sleepover on Christmas Eve to two-hand touch football in a snowy field on Christmas day — always fill me with gratitude and leave me with a full heart. With Christmas behind us, I start turning my eyes to the final celebration of the year: New Year's Eve.
And with that comes its sassy side-piece: New Year's Resolutions.
The Struggle
No knock to the traditional New Year's Resolution rhetoric that floods our feeds and timelines this time of year, but I personally have never been able to keep track of the resolutions in a way that I want.
This has played out in two ways:
1. I either completely forget about the goals I set in January come December, where I’m left feeling unaccomplished, unorganized, and ill-prepared for the year ahead
OR
2. I keep track of my goals excessively, using any free space in my room (closet doors, mirrors, etc.) to put up post-its with every waking thought related to said goal, leaving my room looking like that scene from A Beautiful Mind and my mind a mere a reflection of that
Offering Alternatives
In speaking with others, I’ve found that many people struggle with this tug-of-war between being chill and being a maniac. I even corroborated these sentiments via Twitter poll and a comically small sample size.
So, in 2022 I tried out three different strategies that tap into the reflection element of resolutions without cornering me into a productivity-fear spiral. In case you’re looking for an alternative as well, I thought I’d share:
1) Write a letter to your current self as your 80 year old self. Then write a letter from your 8 year old self to your current self.
I found this exercise while reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. When I did it myself, I was sitting in a coffee shop and was completely caught off-guard by the bulbous tear drops that started rolling down my cheeks. Crying in public, really Shivani?
I think the tears came from the fact that I hadn’t thought about my younger self in so long. She was so fearless and sure of herself. I was reminded that while such confidence has been harder to come by the older I’ve gotten, it’s within me somewhere.
An excerpt:
2) Head over to FutureMe.org, and write a letter to your future self that will be sent to your email at a date of your choosing.
I originally had done this exercise as a part of a corporate retreat when I was still working at Google. When I received this letter exactly one year later, just a couple months ago in October, I was so pleasantly surprised that the ideas (big and small) that were whirling around in my head back then actually came to fruition.
Here’s a little excerpt:
Dear Future Shiv,
By the time you receive this, I'm sure a lot will have changed. 12 months is a long time. Do you live in India now? How are you and Amrit doing? Is Wayfinder still a thing? How was Pooja's wedding? ...And maybe Nish's has already happened as well? How are Papa and Mummy?
What I wish for you is that you have maximized and continue to maximize your "alive time". That you're making decisions that position you well to do that. Decisions that are directionally sound and exciting to you. That speak to your mind and your heart. And when they don't serve that purpose any longer, you change course. That you are becoming more "you" day by day. And action by action.
May all your dreams come true. May you live in a way that allows for such an outcome. Memento mori.
With love and compassion and fire and passion,
A younger Shiv
3) If stringing together a bunch of words in a letter isn’t your jam, try writing just one word. A single word — a summed intention — for the year.
I started this when I turned 25, and felt a lack of control creeping into the sidecar of the quarter-life crisis running full throttle through the streets of my mind.
Between a new job, a health crisis with no end in sight, and the paralyzing realization that I was probably a third of the way through my life, I was spiraling. While I couldn’t control the impact of external circumstances on my productivity (s/o to the Pandemic for really solidifying that one for me 😉), I could control my internal barometer for progress.I decided to distill my resolutions to a single word that year: forgive.
Here’s an excerpt from a note I wrote to myself on December 27, 2019:
I really struggle to be OK with the passage of time. And anything that forces me to confront the reality of how finite our lives are (like New Years Resolutions) usually sends me down some dark rabbit hole of existentialism. But these strategies have lessened that blow for me, and maybe they can for you too.
I would love to hear if any of these exercises are ones you’ve used before, or if you plan to try them out in 2023, or if you have your own alternatives to resolutions.
And if you haven’t, won’t, or don’t, that’s okay too. I hope that this next year brings you whatever it is that you want and need, nonetheless.
See You in the New Year,
Shiv
If this post resonated and you’d like to chat, I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.