How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions?

Are you still feeling fired up? Or are you starting to feel discouraged?

I hope things are going well.

Just in case they aren’t, what might change if you thought about resolutions in a new way—that they only need to last for a moment?

I’ve shared this idea here before and it is actually a concept I encourage throughout the year, especially for those with a history of dieting.

And if you have never dieted, my experience is that all of us women seem to have been impacted by diet culture and its inherent sense of “good/bad,” and “succeed/fail.”

Have you heard or said this before?

“I blew it. I’ll start again tomorrow (next week, etc.).

“I try to eat good foods, and the bad ones just seem to call my name.”

This dichotomous thinking about ourselves, our food, and our behavior, or what I call “diet mentality” often permeates how we see ourselves and the world.

Diet mentality demands perfection

If you have internalized the good/bad thinking of dieting, there is no room for doing things less than perfectly. 

At an intellectual level it may seem reasonable to have slipups and at an emotional level, I’m either “being good” or I’ve “blown it.”

These conclusions most often lead to wild swings in eating or behavior—usually with corresponding feelings of shame and then renewed resolve.

Women often share thinking, “I might as well eat tonight because tomorrow, it’s back to my diet.” Or I’m going to eat all of these so they are out of here and I can start fresh.”

This type of either or thinking becomes generalized to other areas of life.

Here’s what I mean by that. 

If your goal is to speak up and a situation comes and goes in which you planned to speak up and didn’t, in much the same way as you might feel like you “blew it” with your eating, you are likely to feel that same sense of failure concerning speaking up.

Has this happened for you? Maybe already with your resolutions?

When one small slip means you’ve Blown it

Life becomes really difficult when one small goof up means you’ve blown it.

And who doesn’t goof up?

Over the years I have listened to women describe their shame at lacking motivation or willpower.

Truth is we all lack willpower at times. According to Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It), we have a finite amount of willpower. So, it makes sense that some days we would stick to our plans better than other days.

There is much more I could say about this, especially how this type of thinking relates to being tipped and I really want to share with you the idea of moment-by-moment resolutions.

I hope what I have shared so far has stimulated your thinking about the ways diet culture influences your beliefs and behavior. I’d love to hear what came up for you.

Okay back to resolutions.

What if resolutions only had to last for a moment?

If you have been reading my posts you may recognize this idea, as I have shared it in the past.

What if all you needed to do was to set a resolution for a single moment? 

Could you do that?

Inherent in resolutions is the notion that we are either following them or not.

What if you treated each moment as a new opportunity and determined what your “resolve” is in that moment?

There would be no more “well I failed again this year” or “well I’ve blown it for today – I’ll start again tomorrow, next week, or next month.”

Every moment would offer the possibility of a new start. Every moment would be a new moment to be present and to care for yourself.

Resolve in the moment

Maybe in one moment 

• you might be feeling sad, and you resolve to honor your sadness or ask for support.

in the next moment, 

• you might resolve to feed yourself, because you are hungry,

or

• you might be feeling angry and expect yourself to speak up to get your needs met or to be more willing to let go of minor injustices.

And guess what? If you didn’t do any of that, there is a whole new moment that has just arrived!

What do you think?

How might setting your resolutions moment-by-moment change the idea of making resolutions?

How would it change how you care for yourself throughout the year and how you see yourself and your behaviors when things don’t go as you planned?

I’d love to hear your reactions, so please take a minute to leave a comment and let me know. And if you know someone who might benefit from reading this post, please share

With warmth and kindness,
Deb

---

If you find it hard to be yourself in the world, need to keep others happy to feel okay about yourself, or get derailed by disapproval, check out my book Never Enough—Separating Self-Worth from Approval

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to signup below so that you will receive notification when articles are published. Want to share your thoughts or have a topic you are interested in learning about, scroll down to leave a comment.