Resolutions, Intentions, or Yearly Themes?

goal setting tips from a chronically anxious person

You really are, though. Photo by Hillary Black on Unsplash

Happy New Year! My family wrapped up 2023 with a rollicking RSV infection (my son actually coughed so hard he barfed this morning!) This led to a flurry of canceled plans, reconfigurations, and my 11-year-old son watching the ball drop on TV and asking incredulously, “Is that it?” Welcome to New Year’s Eve, kid.

Despite the hype and inevitable disappointment of the changing calendar, I do still find it a hopeful time where goal setting comes naturally. I like to take “Dead Week” (the period between Christmas and New Year’s) to reflect on the previous year and take careful stock of the things I actually did. Like I’ve written previously, when you don’t have a traditional career path with easy-to-spot goals, it can be easy to fall into the self-defeating mindset of “I haven’t achieved anything.” By taking the time to write a reverse to-do list of my previous year, I can see, oh yeah, I have accomplished and experienced a lot.

Once my “done” list is, well, done, I move onto the new year. What would I like to continue? What would I like to change? Generally, I divide my goals into four categories: work, family, personal, and activism, and come up with 1-3 goals for each, which may or may not change over the course of the year. I used to frame these goals as “resolutions” but there’s something about that word that inspires all-or-nothing thinking. If my resolution is to run a marathon in 2024, I fail if I don’t do it; there’s no partial credit for all the things I might’ve improved as I pursued that goal, such as running regularly, getting faster, improving my nutrition, etc. Under this logic, a resolution like “quit drinking alcohol” can get derailed by a single beer, and once you’ve “failed” you might as well have a few more, right?

Instead of “resolution” or even “intention” (too woo-woo for my taste) I prefer to pick a “word of the year”—a practice I borrowed from the excellent #AmWriting podcast. This is an overall theme that I’d like to bear in mind whether or not I achieve my smaller goals. 2023's word was “satisfy”—I wanted to work on my mindset of never feeling like I’ve done enough, and I managed to make enough progress that I forgot what my word of the year was most of the time. 2024’s word is “equanimity” or maybe “equanimous”? I don’t even know how to pronounce it, but I want to increase my equanimous-ness. Per Wikipedia:

Equanimity is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by the experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. The virtue and value of equanimity is extolled and advocated by a number of major religions and ancient philosophies.

Basically, as a life-long anxious person and type A problem-solver, I want to get better at staying in my own lane. Not every problem is mine to solve—I’m thinking of all the social media angst over the Israel-Palestine conflict. Yes, the war is horrible, and yes, I hope it resolves swiftly, and also I personally can’t do anything about it. Spending hours soaking in horrific news isn’t actually helping anybody and it can make my mental health actively worse.

Likewise, not every problem I try to solve has an “optimal” solution. I was talking with a friend a while back about being estranged from my mom and how much it sucks, and the friend countered with their own complicated family relationship. They’d chosen to stay in contact with a difficult family member and were now grieving how much time they felt they’d wasted on this person. It made me realize that there weren’t any good solutions to this particular problem—no amount of brooding or self-help books was going to improve this set of circumstances. Sometimes all your choices are shitty, and that’s life. The good news is you’ll get through it. As I’ve worked on myself in therapy and support groups, I’ve learned that I can trust myself to handle what comes my way. That’s equanimity, too.

Do you have a word of the year? What is it? Or does all of this goal setting/resolution stuff feel like bullshit? Share in the comments so we can learn from each other.

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