I delight in making lists. The New Year, therefore, brings an exciting opportunity to detail the ways I plan to self-improve. Using my finest calligraphy, I begin the process with glee. That is, until a list from the previous year catches my eye and I realize it's the same list year after year. This year, I've resolved not to resolve.
I'm not alone. New York Times columnist, Alyson Krueger (Low Key New Year; 30 December 2022), wrote about Erin Monroe, who posted a Tik Tok video that went viral (hashtag #Don’tSuck2023). Filmed in her fuchsia terry bathrobe, Erin told followers that she was lowering her expectations in 2023. Just before Christmas, Erin started seeing the usual, predictable New Year’s content pop up on her social media feeds. “It was the ‘new year, new you’ or ‘let’s make it the best year ever’ type of stuff,” she said. People were making resolutions to achieve challenging goals, whether it was to pay off student debt or lose 30 pounds."
After yet another tumultuous year –'more Covid uncertainty, midterm elections, rising gas and grocery prices, gun violence, extreme heat waves in the summer and frigid temperatures in the winter' — Erin opted to keep her expectations in check for 2023.
So rather than starting the fresh year with high hopes or great anticipation, Erin declared that many people are crossing their fingers for a year that simply isn’t terrible. “What we really need is a chance to pause and process and release the last three years, but we haven’t been given that opportunity because things are coming at us so quickly.” Erin concluded, “Maybe this year we will finally get that, and then we can have a clear slate to move forward.”
Having low expectations, while perhaps sad, can also feel surprisingly refreshing. “There is all this pressure to achieve big things, but maybe it’s better to not eliminate everything you do in your current life and replace it with new habits,” Ms. Monroe concluded.
Monroe's concept, to replace far reaching goals with new habits, caught my attention. Looking back, the best thing I accomplished in the last year was establishing some new habits. I now write fiction and non-fiction on a schedule. I've lost the weight that predictably appeared in my New Year's list but never achieved. I've called a friend or family member every week and seen formation of closer bonds.
I can account for several big accomplishments in 2022. I joined with my husband to de-clutter twenty years of accumulated stuff by tackling one space at a time, sold our house, bought a perfect new/old house just around the corner, and launched a design and renovation process, none of which were on my New Year's list. I took time out for an Irish Gardens Tour with my friend Elizabeth, and spent quality visits with my children and close sisterly friends. All good things, but it was the forming of new habits that really stands out, making 2022 different from previous.
In David Myers new book, How Do We know Ourselves, the author/psychologist explores "curiosities and marvels of the human mind." Each of the short chapters details useful direction for those bent on self-improvement or offers a slice of entertainment for those who collect trivia on the weirdness of human behavior.
Myers has five pages' worth of advice on making new year's resolutions that last. He says we all know the needed behaviors but "between the idea and the reality… falls the shadow." He then provides six strategies to move from knowing the needed behaviors to doing them. Number 6 caught my attention: Transform the hard-to-do behavior into a must-do habit.
What he suggested, forming habits, is what I came upon by accident. Doing something over and over until it becomes a habit. There came a point in 2022 when I couldn't imagine drinking a cup of coffee until I finished drinking a glass of water, or getting my morning shower without first taking my morning walk, or eating my first meal of the day before a 16 hour fast and enjoying every bite while reading the New York Times news and book reviews. My first cup of coffee always goes with re-reading what I've written the day before. My second cup goes with hand exercises that keeps my Dupuytren's at bay, and if I had done this over the years, as suggested but never followed, I could have avoided annual surgery that keeps me out of the garden dirt for two months and requires twenty-four hours' follow-up for hand therapy appointments.
What is it that I know I should do or perhaps want to do that somehow slips out of grasp when performed occasionally versus regularly? My need to form habits came from a sense of frustration that I am getting older with less time left on this earth to do the things I want to enjoy and accomplish. The forming of habits to improve my health and strengthen relations are the best things I know to do to increase longevity. Building daily habits that result in a healthier more connected me actually allows more time and inspiration to realize my dreams and work on other things important to me.
According to Myers, habits form when we repeat behaviors in a given context. As our behavior becomes linked with the context our next experience with that context evokes our habitual response. Myers explains it as follows: "Studies find that when our willpower is depleted, as when we're mentally fatigued, we fall back on habits – good or bad. To increase self-control, to connect our resolutions with positive outcomes, the key is figuring out the habits that would be required to achieve it, and then forming these habits." This increases self-control and when we lose self-control the habits in place leave us in a good place.
Being a research psychologist and professor, Myers wondered how long it takes to form a beneficial habit. A team at the University College of London asked 96 university students to choose some healthy behavior such as eating fresh fruit with lunch instead of chips or running before they ate dinner. And to perform it daily for eighty-four days. The students logged whether the behavior felt automatic, something they did without thinking instead of finding it hard to do. On average, the study found that behaviors turn into habits after sixty-six days. That's about how long it took me to form four new habits that have been rather life changing for me.
So, let's not just raise a glass to mindfulness, let's put in a word for mindlessness. Mindless, habitual living frees our minds to work on important things. Barack Obama made that point when explaining why, as president, he only wore grey or blue suits and why he ate seven almonds every night while finishing his late night briefing books. He said, "You need to focus your decision making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia."
Over the years, I've found it curious that there is so much knowledge available to me but only when I am ready, due to experience, can I understand and use it. I've missed out on a lot. Only when I formed some new habits purely by doing something and then repeating it and doing it yet again the next day, did I realize that I was in a new place and that my life had improved. The habit made my life better in a way that I could measure.
I am still trying to figure out how to apply it. What habits are required to achieve a big goal? So, let's take my aspiration to strengthen relationships and make new friends. A fairly vague idea. Awareness of need might help. But in the end how will I view my success at the end of the year. How can I build a habit that results in changes I can see and feel good about?
I thought long and hard about it and concluded that launching the good habit of informal Sunday night suppers would work well for me. I often host a dinner party for four guests but these take a day or more of work of shopping and preparations that reduce time for creative endeavors. If I shifted to informal buffet style suppers I could bring more interesting people to me and in turn, to each other (taking into consideration Covid restrictions and flu viruses on the rampage). We could share conversation and good food without a lot of fuss. This idea has long been in the chrysalis stage of something waiting to hatch.
Overseas we had informal midweek suppers over twenty years where we'd cook a big casserole or pot of something and my husband, myself, and our two children were encouraged to invite people we came across in the street or had been wanting to spend some time with, usually ending up with about eight or so guests plus us four. These built some of our best overseas memories and became the breeding ground for transforming acquaintances to friendships and for knowledge exchange. A salon of sorts.
I've always enjoyed cooking and hosting dinner parties for four guests. Six people around a table seems to be the right number for collective conversation, whereas eight tend to break into sub-groups, making it hard or impossible to follow the interesting threads of conversation. The big non-exclusive supper buffet parties provide an entirely different experience, more like a ballet with people shifting into different groupings throughout the night. I become a back-drop, not center stage. With everyone bringing dishes, there is shared ownership and enjoyment.
Once we moved to Beaufort, first in summers, and eventually full time, we traded the mid-week supper for Sunday afternoon croquet parties. Anybody could come; everyone brought food and drinks; a good time was had by all.
I always feel the absence of these croquet gatherings when winter days are dark, and human contact is most needed. Looking into the future, we are moving into a house where we traded a half acre croquet court for a brick courtyard. I keep thinking about new people I've met and want to gather with, but haven't found the opportunity and there is no promise of a croquet party next summer to make that happen. Sunday night suppers in the courtyard or roasted oysters around the fire pit in fall or drinks and apps by the living room fireplace in winter might become my most rewarding habit in 2023.
This New Year's Day, I resolved not to resolve, but do let me know if you want to come to Sunday Night Supper. Everyone is welcome!
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