Investing in your own happiness: Don’t settle for less.
‚2020 is going to be the year!’ Oh, how naive we were back then, in the aftermath of too many Holiday treats, gift wraps and joyful New Year’s Eve celebrations. We took down our Christmas trees, put away the blinking lights and stored away all the merriness and most of us were full of great ideas, and plans, and resolutions for the New Year. And then, 2020 happened.
I think we can all agree that this year has been challenging and different in its very own way. Still, we shouldn’t give 2020 too much credit: even without the disruptions this year has thrown at us, odds are most of our ambitious plans would not have worked out either way.
Why New Year’s Resolutions almost never work
The end of the year is often a time for self-reflection. We take a step back from the business of the world, focus on family and friends. We look back and reflect: where are we today, where have we been one year ago. And then we make plans: we want to lose weight, we want to work less, live healthier, finally apply for that dream job, travel the world. Be our best selves. This year, finally, will be our year.
If we believe the numbers as many as 8 out of 10 of these ambitious plans will fail miserably. Psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert lists being non-specific, negative framing, or simple wanting to please others instead of following your own dreams as the main culprits for unfulfilled New Years Resolutions.
I do believe there is one other, major factor to this. We want to change, but we have never learnt how. Most of our life happens in routines, from the safety of our comfort zones that we have established over many years. We know how to navigate our familiar patterns, how to be successful with what we have worked out for ourselves.
And then we pour all our expectations for transforming our lives into this one single moment, this one day in a year and expect it to make up for the 364 days of resilience that came before.
It’s like we’re getting up from our couch after years of not exercising and trying to climb Mount Everest without oxygen supply and a sherpa. Change, as any other discipline in the world, needs practice.
We we are reluctant to invest in ourselves
That being said, it would be easy to assume we could just pick any given day to start making changes in our lives. Start practicing here and now. If there are things we don’t like, why don’t we change them? Don’t we all want to live our best lives? While there are numerous explanations about why human beings are so resilient to change, I want to emphasize one very particular element of resilience: the reluctance to invest in ourselves.
Whether we’re looking to make dramatic changes in our lives or simply try to establish a few new patterns, it all starts with making the time to deal with ourselves. Every transformation starts with a transformation in our minds. And that can be hard! Truly understanding what it is we want, and why, and how we can get started is a difficult and energy-consuming thing to do. It can be hard work to listen to the nagging voice on our head that tells us when something is off. If is often easier to ignore it and go on with our lives. And the longer we ignore, the more we unlearn to listen and the harder it is to get started after all.
Let’s take a quick look at the number one topic of life transformations: fitness and health. It has long been proven that, to live a healthier life, lose weight, or reach just about any other fitness goal a good strategy and changed overall lifestyle is the number one key success factor. Yet, most people will not invest time and/or money into investigating their lifestyle (not to mention a personal coach, if even only for a few hours) but rather spend the same or more money on overpriced fitness gadgets, magic supplements, or dietary products.
When it comes to deciding what we use our resources on each and every day, our brains are trained to judge any investment — time, money, energy — by its potential output. If we cannot put a clear value on it, we will not make it a priority in our lives. The more tangible the outcome, the easier to prioritize. Investing the time and resources to dealing with our own needs, learning how to listen to ourselves, then deriving a strategy to reach an abstract goal in the far future with the promise of somehow, sometime living a ‚better‘ life that we cannot quite grasp… you see where this is going. Most people will happily invest an hour cleaning their house or washing their car but will be reluctant to just ‚sit and think‘ for only 30 minutes.
This discrepancy becomes even clearer when we look back at the second part of our Mount Everest example. Let’s assume, we have overcome our own skepticism and have decided that sitting down, thinking and dealing with our selves is an investment worthwhile. We might end up at a point where we know that we want to change something, and what but we just don’t no how to do it. In our Mount Everest example that means we have trained to do the hike physically but we probably still would not go out without a Sherpa. Working with a ‚guide‘ a coach or therapist can be an incredible resource in any life transformation. Still, using this resource and asking for support in taking care of one owns mental wellbeing still has a certain touch to it (from my experience less so in the United States than in other parts of the word).
From my own history I can tell you that, when I was struggling, I was so so so reluctant to ask for help because, in my world of being a strong, empowered woman, it felt like yet another defeat. I wanted to figure it out by myself, like I always had. What I didn’t know then is that a good therapist or coach (whichever you chose to work with) enables exactly that: guiding you to using your own potential, not solving your problems for you.
So, to sum this up
We are reluctant to invest in ourselves in term of both time and money for two main reasons:
- because we are naturally hesitant to commit to an investment without a tangible, short-term output and
- this investment is not widely socially acceptable and might raise some eyebrow on the way
Let me make two things very clear:
Working on oneself — with or without support — is by no means an equivalent of ‚not being good enough‘ but a bold statement if ‚‘I am growing and striving for more‘
This is your life. It is what you want to make of it. You deserve to invest in yourself. You owe it to your future self to invest in yourself. You deserve to be happy. Do not settle for less.
And it is obvious: We have learnt how few of our New Years’ resolutions actually succeed, yet we keep making them. I strongly believe this is because, truly, we do want to learn, and grow, and change. Why don’t we try and take a little pressure off our hungover after-New-Year’s-Party-selves and start making self-care, self-reflection, and change a part of every other time of the year. It might just change our lives for good.
