Resolutions Are B.S. – Why We Must Ditch “The Fix”

By Molly Rudberg, MSC, ACC

Around this time each year most New Year’s Resolutions start to slip. According to U.S. News & World Report, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. I feel for you… sort of. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all about thoughtful self-improvement. But if you’d have asked me to weigh in back in late-December, I would have encouraged you not to make any resolutions in the first place. I don’t really believe in New Year’s Resolutions, and here’s why: they go against the very idea of empowerment.

Stick with me.

Did your resolutions come from an empowered place?

More often than not, making resolutions comes from a place of needing to “fix” ourselves – deciding that something will be done/fixed/perfect once we master/finish/complete that one last thing. In fact, making resolutions discredits the very idea that leadership and self-awareness is a work in progress, not something to simply strike from a to-do list once we’ve mastered it in our mind’s eye.

What if we we’re absolutely OK with exactly where we are – and who we are?

What if we accepted the fact that we’re pretty close to good, rather than not good enough? Somewhere along the way, we began believing that everything — everything! — will be SO MUCH BETTER if we have a different title/job/boss, or master that 8-minute mile, or give up drinking wine for an entire month, or insert-semi-attainable-goal-here. This kind of thinking is the opposite of self-improvement. It’s actually self-destructive.

Being Good with Good Enough

Especially at the leadership level, the “not good enough” mentality can be toxic. It translates into believing that we must tick a bunch of boxes to achieve the next level of “good” or “great.” We’re taught that once we clear certain hurdles — adding a VP to your title, nabbing that primo office, making that extra dollar — we’re “done”. In the game of life, once we’ve reached the next level, we tend to coast until the next review period (or New Year’s Resolutions season).

In its place, I’d like to recommend we try to accept the idea that “good enough” is a good thing. Powerful leaders never rest on their laurels — but that doesn’t mean they obsess over their faults. Great leaders don’t spend their time beating themselves up. They’re constantly growing and evolving. They’re good enough for the moment, but they’re also good enough to know that the moment will pass, and new challenges will arise.

Love yourself before others

In the end, it all goes back to self-love. Maya Angelou said,

“I don’t believe anyone who tells me that they love me but they don’t love themselves.”

Her wisdom is based on an African proverb she was known to reference, which warns: Don’t trust a naked person who offers you a shirt. In other words, be careful to lift up others who haven’t yet learned how to lift themselves up. If you’re not able to really accept who you are and believe in your own leadership — growth and development, growing tomorrow’s leaders — it means you need to first work on yourself. It’s an idea so powerful, several authors have explored it in depth, including life coach and leadership specialist Nerisha Maharaj.

Self-love is reflexive, too. When you walk into a meeting, don’t go alone. Bring your people — their thinking, their creativity, their wisdom, their support — with you. Bring everybody who has loved you, to show that you’ve got their back — and the shirt covering it.

Every day is a fresh start

Instead of reserving leadership learning opportunities to a certain time frame — the start of the year or an annual conference — what if we faced each day with an open mind, ready for impressions? Many of us started our careers this way: young, eager, impressionable and ready to learn. The problem is, we age into the idea that we’re not good enough for whatever it is we’re doing presently.

What internal stories are you telling yourself? Look inside and ask: In what reality are my resolutions based? Is it from fear? A disempowered place? We set ourselves up to constantly feel like we suck, like we’re not as good as Colleague A — but could be, if only we changed X this year.

So shift the internal narrative. Instead of looking at how to do things differently to be more like Colleague A or that leader/CEO/Executive – just do them. Not to be more like Colleague A, but to be more like the you you want to be. Commit to these changes (it’s great to start small) and own them. Don’t just adopt them for show because it’s the popular time to do it.

Bottom line: None of us is a born leader.

It’s an ever-evolving practice. This study even shows that it’s the “organizational misfits” — those who don’t climb the corporate ladder — who wind up on top of it. So, let’s make sure we’re building ourselves and our leadership from a place of worthiness, value and self-love, rather than a place of feeling stuck, worthless and self-loathsome.

Love and fear are real (more on that another time soon), and it’s a daily challenge to choose the former over the latter. Once you’re able to have more compassion for yourself, you can extend it to others. And that’s what real leadership is all about.

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Molly Rudberg, MSC, ACC, is a Chicago-based ontological life and career coach focused on working with extraordinary leaders and businesses committed to realizing an impossible future. She facilitates workshops and speaks to organizations and groups about creating intentional, purposeful, passion-filled work, and is the co-author of “From the Yoga Mat to the Corner Office: A Mindful Approach to Business Success” (Highpoint Executive Publishing, 2014).