What's New, Really?

My parents have had the same furniture in their living room since I was in single digits living in Nebraska. This past week one of my girlfriends, who visited me while I was at my parents, proclaimed that people now pay a lot of money for furniture like my parents. What’s old is new again! And what exactly is it that is new, or old depending on how you look at it, for you this time of year? Your resolutions (except they’re not worth any more). As this is the time to write out a list of resolutions with building excitement around the yearly proclamation that this year is definitely going to be the year, I pose a question to you: What is it that’s going to be new for you this year, really? No, I’m not trying to rain all over your parade. And I’m not trying to dose you with a feeling pessimism. What I am trying to do is help you to be your most successful self in this upcoming year. But the only way I can see to do that is by getting you to ask yourself the real question: Why haven’t you succeeded in your resolutions up to this point? As painful as this is for me to say, because I believe so passionately in your success, if you cannot successfully answer that question then I suggest you start gearing up for the same old thing.

Change requires, well, change. And something new is something new. The challenge for many you is that you often want change without changing and you want something new without doing anything new. You want your health to be better but you just can’t quite get around to changing your diet or adding an exercise routine. You want a better career but you are pursuing new opportunities with the same old strategy you’ve always used. You want to better your financial situation but you won’t truly address your old spending habits. You want a better more fulfilling life but you can quite seem to make the changes necessary to have it. So everything you want to be “new” remains old – it remains virtually the same outside of a few random incremental changes or improvements your enthusiasm brings about that are both unsustainable and inconsistent. So what is this telling you? It is telling you you’re dabbling your foot in the puddle of change but you’ve yet to jump into the lake. You haven’t fully committed to the amount or type of change that truly creating something new in your life requires.

Are you fooling yourself? Are you setting yourself up for yet another year of falling short of what you truly want by refusing to make a commitment not only to the end goal, but to what it takes to get there? I think there have been enough articles written, by me included, about how difficult change can be. It has also been discussed ad nauseum how given the choice most people would choose what is safe, familiar and comfy. But safe, familiar and comfortable is also old. And old does not manifest new. So if you want something new, do something new. If you want change in your life, then make some changes. Get radical, if you can stomach it. But stop trying to fool yourself into believing that something new will miraculously show up in your life if you just continue doing the same old thing. It just doesn’t work that way. A better suggestion is to figure out what the new thing is you want for you life, figure out what changes you need to make to have it (and why those changes are so difficult for you to make), and set out on a new path with all the enthusiasm you can muster. And don’t ever look back to the old. Then and only then will something new actually be something new.