New Year’s resolutions vs New Year goals

 

As the dark days of winter creep to­ward the end of the year, many people con­sider res­ol­u­tions they want to make for 2025. I used to make res­ol­u­tions but some how they nev­er las­ted long. Two to four weeks was av­er­age. Two months was con­sidered a success.

Of course, that left me won­der­ing about my will power and feel­ing like a fail­ure. Gradually, without even real­iz­ing it, I shif­ted to a new way of mak­ing plans for a new year. I now make a list of goals.

Resolutions and goals are sim­il­ar but also quite dif­fer­ent. A res­ol­u­tion is some­thing you want to change.

A goal is some­thing you want to achieve. It in­cludes the steps you’ll take to ac­com­plish your goal and the date you plan to achieve it by.

It took me a while to fig­ure out what a goal is. I want to write a book and have it pub­lished is not a goal, it’s a dream. It’s like know­ing where you want to go but not how you’re go­ing to get there.

A goal goes some­thing like this: I want to com­plete an 80,000 word ma­nu­script by August 31, edit and re­vise it by December 31 and send it to a pub­lish­er or agent by January 1. To ac­com­plish this, I will work on my book for two hours every week­day and for four hours every Saturday.

Goals I know will be on my 2025 list are com­plet­ing a sol­id re­vi­sion of the nov­el I’m work­ing on and sev­er­al home im­prove­ment pro­jects to make my home more en­ergy ef­fi­cient and cool­er in the summer.

The home im­prove­ments – a ceil­ing fan, new blinds and new ap­pli­ances will be re­l­at­ively easy. Each one of those goals can be ac­com­plished with­in a month, leav­ing plenty of time for writing.

The writ­ing, how­ever, is al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent. My cur­rent draft of the ma­nu­script con­tains 33 chapters. The thought of re­vis­ing that many chapters, es­pe­cially know­ing that half of them need ma­jor work, is daunt­ing. So, I’ll break the pro­ject down into man­age­able chunks.

Months that I’m work­ing on a fairly pol­ished series of chapters, I can re­vise four or more a month. While work­ing on chal­len­ging chapters, I may only be able to re­vise two a month so I’ll plan accordingly.

From past ex­per­i­ence I know it’s easy to be overly am­bi­tious and that mod­est, real­ist­ic time frames tend to be the most successful. 

But simply hav­ing a goal of­ten isn’t enough. To be truly ef­fect­ive ex­perts say you should write your goal down, make a com­mit­ment by telling someone your plan, and be­ing ac­count­able to that per­son. I con­sider my­self lucky to have two cre­at­ives – writer Caroline Woodward and artist Judi Wild — to share my goals with.

I try to be reas­on­able about what I can ac­com­plish yet push my­self a bit too. To be per­fectly hon­est, I nev­er meet all my self-im­posed dead­lines. But they keep me on track and mo­tiv­ate me to try harder.

Of course goals can be made any time of the year but I usu­ally map mine out dur­ing the last few days of December. I al­ways look for­ward to that in­ter­lude — the cusp of one year passing and an­oth­er be­gin­ning — and all the pos­sib­il­it­ies that brings.

Feature im­age at top: Night in the Forest, a paint­ing by Bev Byerley. 

 

 

 

Winter is a time for Reading

 

When the days be­come short and dark­ness des­cends far too early, I reach for a book. What bet­ter way to trans­port my­self to an­oth­er era, place, or person’s life?

I come from a long line of read­ers. As a child, there were al­ways stacks of books in vari­ous places in the house. As far as I can re­mem­ber, there were no book­cases, just piles of books here and there. Some were for my grand­moth­er and par­ents; oth­ers for me and my three siblings.

As I got older, I slipped volumes from both piles, hap­pily en­scon­cing my­self in an­oth­er world.

For many years after I moved to Canada, my fam­ily vis­ited fre­quently. For some reas­on, they seem to travel in herds and of­ten my two-per­son house­hold ex­pan­ded to sev­en or even nine.

Of course, this meant ex­tra bed­ding and cre­at­ive sleep­ing ar­range­ments. But even more im­port­ant were lamps – some­times with ex­ten­sion cords – so each per­son could read in bed be­fore clos­ing their eyes to sleep.

Those in the know sug­gest that read­ing fic­tion is bet­ter for the brain as it re­quires ima­gin­a­tion. But I usu­ally have two books on the go at once. The day­time book is of­ten non­fic­tion, while the even­ing and bed­time book tends to be fiction.

Books I am or have re­cently read include:

There is a Season by Patrick Lane 

Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling by Michele Barker and David Griffin Brown

The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad

Books on my to read list include:

Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

The Waiting by Michael Connelly

Gumboots in the Straits: Nautical Adventures from Sointula to the Salish Sea ed­ited by Lou Allison, com­piled by Jane Wilde

Books open the door to oth­er worlds, both ima­gin­ary and real, as well as dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing, eat­ing and mov­ing. They are com­pan­ions on dark, winter nights and al­low us to es­cape the drudgery or demons of every­day life.

Top im­age: some old books by Dickens that my grand­fath­er brought around Cape Horn long ago.

The power of focus — Part 2

Cougars, like all cats, fo­cus in­tently on their prey.

Some people find it easy to in­tensely fo­cus but, for a lot of us it re­quires some thought and plan­ning to achieve this state. My ba­sics to set the stage are time, place, and short breaks.

Time : A reg­u­lar sched­ule will al­low your body and brain to be­come ac­cus­tomed to the routine and settle in more easily.

Everyone has their own time of the day or night when they are at peak fo­cus. This is when you ex­per­i­ence your sharpest think­ing and cre­at­ive en­ergy. For me, it’s early morn­ing be­fore any­thing else clut­ters up my mind.

Place: This is the space where you keep your tools – pen and pa­per, com­puter, paint­brush, whatever. Going to your cre­at­ive spot at reg­u­lar times lets your cre­at­ive side know it’s time to wake up.

Ideally, this is a quiet place where you’ll be un­dis­turbed. If si­lence is im­possible, ear plugs or noise-can­cel­ling head­phones can shut out or re­duce sounds.

Distractions are the en­emy of fo­cus. It’s best to shut off or not re­spond to com­puter and cell phone no­ti­fic­a­tions while work­ing. Talking also dis­rupts the cre­at­ive cir­cuit, as it uses a dif­fer­ent part of the brain.

Although some people think they’re great at mul­ti­task­ing, re­search shows that, on av­er­age, it takes ap­prox­im­ately 25 minutes to re­gain fo­cus after an interruption.

Breaks: Just like our bod­ies need a break from sit­ting or stand­ing, the brain needs peri­od­ic time-outs to op­er­ate at max­im­um ca­pa­city. Ten to fif­teen minutes of activ­it­ies that re­quire little thought, such as fold­ing laun­dry, weed­ing, or stretch­ing, give your brain a rest.

Going out­side, be­ing in nature, and walk­ing are es­pe­cially help­ful. When I told chiro­pract­or, Alicia Steele, that I fre­quently find solu­tions to writ­ing prob­lems while walk­ing, she ex­plained that the bi­lat­er­al move­ment of arms and legs pro­motes activ­ity in both sides of the brain.

Taking a break and do­ing some­thing re­l­at­ively mind­less can en­hance fo­cus and cre­ativ­ity, but the key is to not think about the pro­ject you’re work­ing on.

While re­search­ing The Cougar, Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous, I was amazed at the big cat’s in­tense con­cen­tra­tion. When mov­ing in on prey, they nev­er shift their gaze away from it, even when circ­ling around or chan­ging position.

They’re totally fo­cused. Just like the man I saw jump­ing from a stand­still up six feet onto a con­crete ledge. (See The power of fo­cus – Part 1)

 

References:

Want to be more cre­at­ive? Let your Mind Wander,” Sian Beilock, Psychology Today. 

Keep the Focus on Your Long-term Vision,” Mayo Clinic.

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein.

 

The power of focus — Part 1

A Great Blue Heron look­ing for fish.

It was a cold and blustery, yet thor­oughly splen­did fall day when I roun­ded a corner near the mar­ina and saw the man. He crouched slightly at the bot­tom of con­crete stairs, arms ex­ten­ded, el­bows bent and palms fa­cing each oth­er. The most un­usu­al thing was that he re­mained per­fectly still for at least two minutes. He re­minded me of a her­on wait­ing for a fish to spear.

He was at the entry­way of the path I wanted to take so I paused to fig­ure out what was go­ing on. Then, In one flu­id move­ment, he lowered his arms, raised them and jumped lightly onto the six foot con­crete ledge in front of him. The fact that the heels of his feet hung over the edge did noth­ing to hamper him from slowly and grace­fully stand­ing up.

I was awed by his strength and body con­trol. But even more so by his in­tense fo­cus. And he had good reas­on to fo­cus. If his jump had failed, he would have fallen back­wards onto the con­crete, per­haps break­ing his back, head or end­ing his life altogether.

Dumbfounded, I didn’t even see him re­turn to his start­ing po­s­i­tion. But there he was again, crouched at the bot­tom of the stairs with no dis­cern­able signs of movement.

He seemed ob­li­vi­ous to me or any­thing else but I wor­ried about dis­tract­ing him, so slowly con­tin­ued my walk with head tilted down­wards, peek­ing at him from un­der the brim of my hat as he ex­ecuted two more per­fect jumps.

By now, I was close enough to no­tice that he was speak­ing to someone, through Bluetooth ear buds after each jump. Was the per­son on the oth­er end coach­ing him? Or were they a safety link in case he fell?

Later, I wished I’d stopped to talk to him but there was no way I wanted to in­ter­rupt his con­cen­tra­tion. As a writer, I’ve been in a sim­il­ar state a few times — sur­fa­cing from a story to real­ize hours have passed in­stead of five minutes, or to dis­cov­er the faint sound I’d been hear­ing was really a repair­man pound­ing on the door, ir­rit­ated that I wasn’t let­ting him in when he could see me sit­ting at my desk.

Intense fo­cus is not easy to achieve. Especially these days with cell­phones and oth­er devices read­ily to hand. But it’s an art worth achieving.

Check out the up­com­ing November blog to read about cou­gars and fo­cus, as well as sci­en­tific­ally proven ways to gen­er­ate that state of mind.

Photo cred­it Joshua Goddard