…Love others as well as you love yourself… -Mark 12:31 (MSG, italics mine)
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I stopped a long time ago without a reason. I figured out why when Michael Hyatt recently quoted a University of Scranton study which said only 8% of New Year’s resolutions succeed.
8%.
I believe it. Every January the parking lot at the gym fills with cars, and I freeze as I walk a mile to reach the front door. Three weeks later I have my pick of the workout machines. People who resolved to get healthy fall back into old patterns. A ministry leader told me the same dynamic occurs in churches- the first Sunday of the month looks like Easter but attendance decreases by the end of January.
As I thought about 2017, I decided to set goals rather than make resolutions. Maybe it’s just semantics, but there feels like an inherent difference at the core of resolutions versus goals, and it has everything to do with shame.
Shame tends to drive New Year’s resolutions while desire motivates the healthy goals we set for ourselves.
Consider these common resolutions:
Get fit and Stay Healthy
Eat Better
Spend Less and Save Money
Quit Smoking
Enjoy Life More
While none of these are bad things, any worthy self-evaluation starts with the heart. What occurs inside of you as you make your resolution? Most resolutions start with an unspoken, “Here are the things I don’t like about myself…” I don’t like what I see in the mirror. I don’t like what I see on my plate. Essentially, we use our self-contempt to motivate our heart toward change.
The number on my scale should be lower, so I will buy a gym membership in the coming year. I should pray more and be more spiritual, so I will start going to church. Do you hear the contempt in these statements? Our self-contempt can be blatant or subtle, but always it lacks kindness and self-compassion.
Most resolutions are built on toxic-shame, the feeling which tells us we are not enough and unworthy as we are. Thus we build on a faulty foundation. Here’s another problem: Toxic-shame only breeds more toxic-shame. Even if you lose the pounds or clock more hours in church, neither invites you to love yourself. And if you cannot love yourself, you will struggle to love others.
Until we love ourselves as God and others love us, we will rarely make strides toward maturity. Grace always precedes genuine growth and change.
This isn’t to say toxic-shame motivates all New Year’s resolutions. As in all things, the heart underneath tells the real story. When I look at the resolutions I’ve made in the past, all of them stemmed from things I wanted to fix about myself (which is really a subtle way to say the things for which I held myself in contempt). Resolutions break down because the human heart does not respond well to fixing. If you need any proof, tell your wife she needs to lose some weight or inform your husband he needs to make more money; then watch shame erupt.
Resolutions attempt to fix, but the heart longs to desire. Goals tend to grow from a heart which wants more out of life. Consider the difference between resolutions and goals in the questions we ask to get there:
Resolutions start with: What do I need to fix about myself?
Goals begin differently: What do I want?
Can you listen for the voice of desire? What rises up in your heart when you ask yourself, what do I want? Linger enough with the question. Don’t rush through it.
What do you want?
A heart that answers from healthy desire likely beats to this tune: My self-worth is intact whether I meet this goal or not. Still I want to pursue it and learn about myself in the process.
To whatever extent your heart cannot voice this statement reveals toxic-shame. Even as I wrote that sentence, my own shame began to resist the process of dreaming and hoping. It is too dangerous. Too risky. Better to minimize my desires and stay comfortable in my shame. Better to set an unattainable or impractical New Year’s resolution than plan written steps toward a goal.
In order to set goals, we must first love ourselves enough to validate our desires. The more favor and grace we find for ourselves, the freer we are to assess our abilities and opportunities. A heart led by desire is also willing to grieve and reassess when goals fall short.
As you dream about the coming year, what do you want? And if reality does not meet your hopes, how much will you like and love yourself? The heart work you do on your shame will far outweigh whatever behaviors you attempt to change. After all, the journey from toxic-shame toward healthy shame has little to do with accomplishments. Resolutions work from the outside-in. Goals move from the inside-out.
A few extra thoughts on resolutions and goals:
New Year’s resolutions often lack practicality. Take “Enjoy Life to the Fullest”. What does that even mean? How can one work toward it? This is not to say you cannot, but enjoying life to the fullest is tough to measure. Your shame loves to make resolutions like this. It’s actually sabotage. If I make a resolution which cannot be measured, how can I blame myself for failing to accomplish it? Then shame gets to comfortably continue its self-disgust.
Resolutions can be dramatic. Another contemptuous ploy would be to set the bar too high for yourself. Next year, despite not having been to the gym in 2016, I am going to workout out 365 mornings. Making dramatic resolutions helps us avoid our felt shame in the days leading up to the new year, but it simply won’t last. If the resolutions you make are dramatic in proportion to the rest of your life, check the spirit of your heart. Again, our toxic-shame lives to set us up for failure.
Goals deserve and require a plan. They must be believable and accomplishable. This isn’t to say dream small. Rather it is to properly assess yourself and circumstances before launching into a goal. Too many resolutions fail for lack of preparation. How many people fail to establish a workout habit because they get up an hour earlier but fail to go to bed earlier? The resolution lasts only for a week because they added to the daily routine rather than changing their schedule. Similarly, you won’t save money without changing the budget. All additions to your life come at a price.
