New year, new you! 10 Steps to Change Your Life!

Are you setting goals for this year? Did you decide to get fit? Eat healthier? Spend more time with your family? Be more mindful? Read on for my famous 10 steps to change your life!

Bah, humbug!

Reflect for a moment on what you’ve just read. Head to Google and do a search using the terms “New Year” and see what you come up with. My search page showed, amongst all the horrific news of car smashes and events for the holiday season, topics like “New Year Bootcamp: Get rid of your debt”, “cook something new every week”, “read more books”, “create a cleaning schedule you’ll stick to”…

Ever wonder why we do this? Every single year?

First, we buy into the idea that our life right now isn’t good enough. There are improvements we can [read ‘should’] make.

Then we decide what “good” looks like. Better finances, healthier diet, less time on devices, cleaner and tidier house…whatever.

We then read all the things we should do – apparently, improving body, mind and soul is good for… the soul.

The popular “experts” then tell us to use a planner, tick off daily fitness goals, and tackle small actions frequently.

Betcha like anything most of us will fail. Even if we begin with the best of intentions.

This year, I’m not doing “goals” – I’ve bought into the over-use of SMART goals for too long, and I’m rejecting them. Why? Because life begins to look like a whole bunch of tick boxes, things to do, keeping the “eye on the prize” at the end. But when is “the end”? Is it a set of “yes! I’ve done it” achievements? Little celebrations? Or do we feel coerced into setting yet another goal? Can goals prevent us from being present to the intrinsic nature of daily life? I think so, at least sometimes. A goal focus can take us away from appreciating what we have right now, while also detracting from the process of going through each day. We can lose the joy of running, for example, if we’re only looking to the finish line. We can forget the pleasure of fishing in beautiful natural surroundings if we’re only looking to hook a fish!

So, as a start to this year, I’m sitting still. I’m noticing my Monday morning routine as I slurp my coffee and sit at my computer to write my blog. I’m making a choice to be present with my thoughts and ponderings. I’m looking back at the blog posts I’ve made since 2007 – all 1262 of them! – and feeling proud of my accomplishment. I’m revisiting my “why” or the values that underpin my writing. I’m acknowledging that I’ve chosen to put my voice out there, whether others read what I write or not (FWIW readership is low compared with the heady days of 2008 and 2009!). These choices aren’t in a weird pseudo-spiritual mindful sort of way, just a nod to my habits and the underlying reasons for doing what I do.

I’ve been pondering the drive clinicians have to set goals with patients, and to record achievements. As if these exist outside of the person’s context and all the other influences on what a person can and does do. There are even posts declaiming patients for not “doing the work” even after the explanations and rationales are presented, as if the only factor involved in doing something is whether it has a good enough reason for it to be done. This attitude is especially pertinent when a person lives with persistent pain, and is embroiled in a compensation system with expectations for recovery.

I suppose I’m looking for more attention to be paid to strengths people demonstrate as they live with persistent pain. More awareness of the complexity of living with what persistent pain entails (see this post for more). And for us as clinicians to be more content with what is, despite limitations and uncertainty, ambiguity, frustration and limited ‘power’ to make changes happen.

Contentment is at the heart of “fulfillment in life” (Cordaro, et al., 2016). It’s an emotion with connotations of peace, life satisfaction, and, again according to Cordaro and colleagues, “a perception of completeness in the present moment.” In English, contentment invokes a sense of “having enough” and a sense of acceptance whether the situation is desirable or undesirable (Cordaro, et al, 2016, p.224). Contentment, in contrast to happiness, is considered a low arousal state: that is, when we feel content we experience reduced heart rate, skin conductance and is associated with serotonergic activity, while happiness in contrast activates higher arousal states including dopaminergic responses (Dustin et al., 2019). The table below gives some interesting comparisons between the “reward” and the “contentment” states in humans – take it with a grain of salt, but it makes for useful pondering.

When we think about helping people with persistent pain, how often do we consider contentment as a long-term outcome? To be content that, despite all the hard work the person and their healthcare team and their family and colleagues, this person has achieved what they can. Do we even have this conversation with the person? Giving them the right to call it quits with constantly striving for more.

How can we develop contentment for ourselves and for the people we work with? Should we guide people towards activities that foster contentment? These will likely be the leisure activities that take time, that involve giving without a focus on receiving, that calm people, that invoke nurturing (plants, animals, people), and probably those that involve moderate intensity movement practices (Wild & Woodward, 2019). I hope we’ll draw on occupational therapy research and practice, because these activities will likely be long-term practices for daily life contentment, and daily life is our occupational therapy focus.

For ourselves, I suspect fostering contentment will be more difficult. Our jobs, often, depend on finding out what is wrong and setting goals for a future state, not ideal for those wanting to be OK with what is. We often work in highly stressful and demanding contexts with numerous insults to our moral ideals and values. We debate ideas and approaches to our work with vigour. We make judgements about our own performance and that of others. We often find our expectations aren’t fulfilled and that we can’t do what we think/know would be better.

I’ll leave you with a series of statements about contentment compared with other states that can be related to contentment (Cordaro et al., 2016, p.229). It helps clarify, perhaps, what we might do for ourselves in this new year. Happy 2023 everyone!

Cordaro, D. T., Brackett, M., Glass, L., & Anderson, C. L. (2016). Contentment: Perceived Completeness across Cultures and Traditions. Review of General Psychology, 20(3), 221-235. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000082

Dustin, D. L., Zajchowski, C. A. B., & Schwab, K. A. (2019). The biochemistry behind human behavior: Implications for leisure sciences and services. Leisure Sciences, 41(6), 542-549. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2019.1597793

Lustig, R. (2017). The hacking of the American mind: The science behind the corporate takeover of our bodies and brains. New York, NY: Avery.

Wild, K., & Woodward, A. (2019). Why are cyclists the happiest commuters? Health, pleasure and the e-bike. Journal of Transport & Health, 14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2019.05.008