Resolutions Designed to Fail

My father, no stranger to drink, asked me to help him clean out several bottles of wine when I was visiting him over the holidays. I was happy to—it was delicious. I asked him if he was quitting drinking forever.

“Nah, I do this every year,” he explained. “The longest I’ve ever made it is 8 months.” Pops didn’t stop drinking every New Year because he wanted to quit for good, it turned out, but just to see how long he could go without drinking, both in an attempt to get a little more healthy and to outline in willpower the separation between hobby and habit.

I think it’s a hell of an idea.

Most self-improvement resolutions are doomed to failure in the first place, because we don’t actually want to change the things we are trying to change. Very few people want to quit smoking or start exercising. We want the results of those things, sure, but we know in the backs of our minds that we’re eventually going to give up before we get to our goal. That seems to doom us from the start. (Or at least me. I sure as shit don’t want to pretend I have any insight into any mind but my own.)

So what if instead of an iron-clad, eternal life goal, this year’s resolutions become competitions with ourselves to see how far we can go before we allow ourselves to give in? It’s a subtle but potentially useful slight-of-mind. Perhaps by accepting future failure as an inevitability, we can work towards an open ended goal instead of dreading the long, unending slog that saps any desire to actually improve.

One of my self-improvement goals is to start exercising every day, both aerobic (elliptical) and strength-building (ladder system). Oh, and a little yoga in there to keep things loose. That’s three separate exercise routines a day—I’ve never been able to stick to one!—but somehow it seems less daunting if I make it a challenge to myself instead of a burden to carry for the rest of my life. I might even say I’m looking forward to exercise. Shocking!

I’ll start tomorrow. (Seriously! Today I woke up at noon and am still somewhat hungover. If I don’t do it, you guys can all make fun of me and remind me that the premise of this whole post was bunk.)