On Fresh Starts
Last week, I had someone ask me on behalf of her friend if I knew of any retreats in the area for an immersive training for stretching and toning. This friend (I don’t know his name, I’m going to call him George) is apparently averse to any exercise other than walking. The intention would be to enjoy an immersive retreat and hopefully carry on the exercise regimen on his own afterwards.
This is the second time someone has asked me about a retreat involving some kind of strength and mobility intensive at its core so I thought for a few moments about if that’s something I’d want to offer and how I would do it. But I thought more about George and the inquiry — the idea that he would be immersed in this new thing in an environment that felt appealing, and then manage to continue on his own in daily life. Like a jumpstart. The thing is, for someone like George, who is already averse to doing exercise, this immersive most likely wouldn’t work long term.
I recently read a statistic from a research summary about the intention-behavior gap, which is exactly what it sounds like — the gap between intending to do something and actually doing it. The percentage you're likely to actually do the thing you’ve set out to do, according to the study, is 47.6% — basically, it’s a coin toss. Imagine what your chances might be when you don't even want to do the thing but know that you should, as it seems George is feeling.
Coincidentally, I came upon a blog post by Oliver Burkeman yesterday (who wrote a book that changed my life, Four Thousand Weeks). He writes about “Fresh Starts” — not sure when he wrote it, I don’t think it’s recent, but it’s fitting for the upcoming New Year. He writes:
“The big lure of all such moments [ . . . ] is the promise of making a fresh start. The unspoken hope is that you won't just change a few things for the better, but make a total break with the past. You'll reboot your life, leave disorganization and procrastination behind you once and for all, and do everything differently from now on.
As you're presumably aware, this is a terrible mindset for actually making lasting changes. What you need, instead, are tiny goals and a commitment to incremental progress ("small wins"), plus a willingness to encounter failure after failure as you stumble toward improvement.”
What Burkeman gets at here and in all of his work is to come to terms with the fact that we cannot start anew. And instead of that being depressing, can we let that be liberating? And allow it to release us from the agony of constantly feeling like we need the fresh start diet, fresh start meditation weekend, fresh start workout retreat, fresh start Monday, January 1st, birthday, etc.
I was talking to someone about joining The MOB recently and she said she wanted to be a part of it but she needed to get in shape first. I was like wait, what do you mean?? For her, joining The MOB symbolized that she was becoming a new person, someone who engaged in physical activity regularly, and for that, she needed to prepare herself. She was attempting to break free of the “old” version of herself and make a royal entry into her “new and improved” version. I shared with her that one of the biggest pieces of The MOB was that it was structured to offer support: allowing members to show up as they are and be accommodated with compassion. Not sure that's what she was looking to hear.
That's part of what's missing in Burkeman's piece that I want to add here. "A willingness to encounter failure after failure", as he suggests, in the process of making those small wins happen is a journey almost impossible done alone. Without a support system, without help, who has the energy and willpower to keep getting up over and over for things we find so hard to do in the first place?
I think there’s something sobering and actually hopeful about coming to terms with reality rather than trying to hide behind the lure of fresh starts (brought to you by the billion dollar health and fitness industry). Change IS possible, self improvement is of course possible, but not in the ways it’s sold to us.
I wish I could write profile stories of every single person I work with who has made slow, incremental change. It sounds lovely and easy when I write about it in a few words and then you read it. But in real life it has not been lovely and easy for them. Some months are riddled with cancellations because of life events, some weeks there little sleep and lots of exhaustion. There were surgeries, deaths of loved ones, travel plans, COVID recoveries, holidays, kids with RSV, faceplants and broken toes. The long term work of consistency is not pretty. The changes that have taken place for these people happened over many many months. Months of showing up, receiving support, and being permitted to move in whatever way was possible at the time during our sessions.
And those are the two key elements that keep showing up over and over again in my work with others and in myself. Showing up (consistency) and receiving support. Showing up is really hard to do in those moments I listed above, when life is getting the better of you. But that’s the point of the support. It’s the anchor that helps carry you through the downs to get to the ups, to remind you that the ups happened before and will happen again. And the support can’t exist without the consistency because without showing up, there’s nothing to support.
I’m writing about this because it hits home for me. This isn’t a lecture or a preach, it’s an attempt to share with you the things I contemplate for my clients but also for myself, daily. That small and incremental changes are the reality, that finding the right support systems to help me stay consistent with things that are important to me is where the real effort lies.
As we move into a new year, I invite you to take it easy on yourself. Release yourself of the lure to be someone different, to radically change. I invite you to instead contemplate your support systems — the people, the structures, the environments around you — and their role in helping you show up in the ways you intend to.
keep moving.
alia
(I'd like to add a note here that it's not beyond me that support often comes at a dollar mark that many people can't afford, and even in just writing this post, and many of my others, I am making an assumption about my audience. Simultaneously, I have witnessed that the financial burden that comes with services of support are by no means the only thing keeping some from seeking such support for behavioral change.)