Helloooo0o0oo!
Happy new year! I hope you managed to take some time off amongst the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
This week’s content is all about self help, because, like everyone else, I’ve been consumed by the promise of the year ahead.
Half the battle of a new year’s resolution is wanting something you don’t have.
It’s hard! Dream big, but make achievable goals; prioritise what matters, but also pay the rent; go to Europe, but also buy the house.
It’s unsurprising that over half of them fail.
To cast away your ambitions and aspirations as self-indulgent or silly would be wrong, but setting extrinsic goals that you ultimately can’t meet isn’t likely to set you up for success either.
If staring down the barrel of another year feels overwhelming, you might find some solace here. (Note: some of these pieces might sound familiar because I recommended a few of them last year.)
Here are four things I consumed this week:
Ash, Dylan, Dusty: Mindset coach Ben Crowe explains how he makes our best better by Melissa Fyfe interviewing Ben Crowe for The Sydney Morning Herald
I loved this take from Ben Crowe:
“We’re too busy pursuing perfection, trying to meet other people’s expectations, or chasing extrinsic goals such as money, status or celebrity. We keep a mask on, hide our emotions and fear vulnerability and shame, which disconnects us from the people around us. In trying to numb these bad feelings – through alcohol or Netflix or consumerism – we numb joy as well as pain.”
🗞️ Read it: Ash, Dylan, Dusty: Mindset coach Ben Crowe explains how he makes our best better
On Leaving Room for Surprises by Caroline Cala Donofrio for Between a Rock and a Card Place
Starting something new doesn’t have to be horrible. I loved Donofrio’s take on how new habits can break our routine and make way for bigger and better things:
“Somewhere among the schedules and to-do lists, the inhibitions we gather along the way, we can work our way into a groove. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — grooves can be comfy, stable places to curl up for a while. But they can also lead to inertia. To narratives we can’t escape.
Smaller shifts can be a gateway to larger ones, ushering in new habits, interests, mindsets. They can also be profound and impactful on their own.”
🗞️ Read it: On Leaving Room for Surprises
It’s the Most Inadequate Time of the Year by Amanda Mull for The Atlantic
Amanda Mull explores the role of capitalism in new year’s resolutions. Everything is marketing, apparently:
“With New Year’s resolutions, the commodification of inadequacy can be explicit in a way that might seem rude during most of the year, and the message is clear: You’ve got some work you should be doing, and these companies have some related products they’d like to show you. New year, new you, new gym membership!”
🗞️ Read it: It’s the Most Inadequate Time of the Year
#113: The new quantified self by Hayley Nahman for Maybe Baby
Measuring your every move might be… bad? Who would’ve thought?
“Friends that can be counted, tastes that can be checked like boxes, personalities that can be summed up with labels, fitness that can be tracked and analyzed. It’s a lot easier and more immediately satisfying to rely on concrete data than something borderless like intuition or feeling. It’s also a crutch—a perfect balm for insecurity that can secure us in only one specific way, and not always in the way we think.
It takes a certain trust to move forward without proof, but unfortunately we outsourced that a long time ago, and it’s hard to imagine turning back now.”
🗞️ Read the piece: #113: The new quantified self
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Here’s your weekly Moose fix: