Selfs-Management
By: Elizabeth Mayer
Tags: Resolutions, Goal Setting, Habits, New Year Resolution

It’s that time of year where all hell breaks loose and I succumb myself to habits where it feels like a new person takes over. It’s also the time of year where I start to think about what I want for next year. I’ll refer to this phenomena as “managing the me’s”, “self’s management” or if you hate my improper grammar, you could also refer to it as “selves management” (you proper betch). As I sit today, on the outside, people know me as Liz, I welcome an entirely new personality in town starting around the late October thru December time period. I call this person “Holly” because she has thrown all discipline to the wind in favor of holiday enjoyment. Holly’s motto: Play hard, play hard. It’s the holiday ale beer of year, which goes great with those mini Reese holiday trees and hot cocoa bombs. Pancakes for lunch? Sure! Pancakes for dinner? They’re vegetarian! Holly often has a hard time focusing (could be the sugar). Her early morning routine is lackluster, the items on the list that are “important” but not “urgent” and the overall focus on the long-game is not on Holly’s radar. She’s busy watching South Park. Priorities are areas that Holly has stuffed in a stocking, waiting for another “me” to open post December. Who cares if next month requires hardcore business planning and it would be easier if I set aside time to address those things now? Holly has Christmas cards to send, virtual holiday happy hours to attend, wines to sample, gifts to buy and holiday memes to forward. Oh, Holly-I love it when you’re here and I can’t wait until you get the hell out.

No worries though, because come January 1, “Elizabeth” comes to town. She wears a shoulder pads to sleep. She insists that her outfit consists of some level of fastening, so there is no room for bloating. She’s on her a-game and she seriously does not f around. Her motto is: Work hard, work hard. Her briefcase has actual paper briefs in it versus the crackers that Holly carries around. It’s strictly water with lemon in place of holiday ales. Elizabeth will aggressively carve away at the soft, bloated edges Holly left last month. A new planner will replace the stack of magazines Holly bought. Television rots the brain- now it’s onto self-improvement books! There will be an agenda, and there will be consequences for activities left ignored. She’s a drill sergeant, and she has her shit together- and she works. At least she works for one month, until “Eeyore” shows up in February due to little day light and an extensive winter and Holly may stop by for a weekend because she’s sick of the extreme schedule.

As I sit between Holly and Elizabeth, I had to ask my selves:

Why do I always need January to have an extreme shift that eventually putters out?

Why can’t Elizabeth come to town every month but maybe not be so rigid, and maybe Holly shows up for the weekends occasionally, and has learned moderation?

How do I make actual changes that are consistent?

How do I embrace the complexity of the sides of myself in a way that is productive?

After having a meeting with my selves, this is what I have learned:

At this point in the year, specifically 2020, all of our selves have had enough. We are living in a gosh darn pandemic for crying out loud. Nothing feels the same. Nothing is certain. If we cannot give ourselves permission to enjoy the moment, we are not living our lives. So, Holly needs to be in my life, because I need to laugh and have fun. And so, I need to focus on nurturing Holly consistently through the year so she doesn’t show up like a bat out of hell with cured meats and enough wine to sustain San Vito, Italy in the last 12 weeks of the calendar year. And Elizabeth needs to be in my life because there are things I want to do and a person I want to become, however without focus and intentional action, no transformation occurs. Any shift will require taking the time to listen to what I really need, and leaning into elements of both work and the play- a productive balance.

Therefore, instead of broad resolutions this year (or none) I am focusing on areas of my life that I want to either maintain or shift and I am going to tie these areas to some consistent activities, a why that is really friggin’ powerful and a desired emotion, in order to get really knee-deep in the shit that matters to all of my selves …here’s what this looks like:

Pick a (few) meaningful focus(es)- I like to have a few meaty focal areas, that house a specific goal within each. I want to make all of my selves happy. You may just pick one area and double down, or pick one area a month. The point is you choose an area (or areas) you want to develop and focus to ensure there is balance between your kick-it self with your kick-ass self (in other words, your party and productive sides). This gives balance to your life. The more that you focus on balance, the less incongruences you have in your life. My Areas: Physical health, Mental health, Career, Family and Joy. And each of these areas have 1 specific goal that are paced for the entire year, so I make sure Elizabeth keeps showing up.

Set an action vs. a KPI alone- Key performance indicators make a goal measurable — no shit. Here’s the thing, you can control your habits, you cannot always control the outside impact. All in all the consistency is the most important dimension of a lasting change, which is why I am a big fan of making the metric a habit vs. a result alone. To do this with any goal you want to achieve, take the desired result, and focus on an activity you can control to help you transform from point a to point b. Baby steps are big here too- don’t go nuts. Check out the book Atomic Habits for more specifics.

Have some strong intentions. As the saying goes, if we have a why, we can tolerate any how. Checking the box isn’t enough to stay motivated to do the damn thing. Why the hell do I care about my physical health? What is a “why” that is strong enough when I have 30 minutes of free time, am physically well and haven’t moved from the couch all day? To get to a why that is so deep that it’s undeniable and none of our selves can argue against it, we must be ruthless and scare all of us into action. Here is my why in relation to physical health: every day I get to run, it’s one less day I have to run. I will eventually physically start to decline, and the only inevitability in life is eventual death. So doesn’t it make sense to do everything within my power to extend my longevity? Holy shit! BAM! That is far more powerful than a why being “I want to be more healthy” or “I want to wear a smaller size” (cue eye roll) and no one can argue with that “why”, including Holly when she wants to count a keg-stand as physical movement.

Get the feeling. There are some things you want (like say, a promotion or a strong relationship with your spouse), that are somewhat in the hands of other people, but if you focus on the emotional need a promotion or strong relationship represents (confidence, significance, love), you can select activities related to your career and marriage that you can control that brings you closer to the feels every day. Think of things you can do and the things you can say to yourself that evoke the emotions you want. It’s not whoo-whoo- it works because it empowers you to own your inner dialog, set boundaries and gain perspective! Isn’t what everyone really wants is to feel better? So if you want more money so you feel better about your finances, you may in fact need more money, but what you really desire is to feel abundance in your life, so go after a sense of gratitude for what you have as you work on ways to budget, manage and increase your cash flow.

I hope 2021 brings all of your selves closer together, stitching all of the pieces of you into a beautiful quilt of a human that you want to be.