New Year’s Resolutions: A Tactical Approach

Speaker 1 0:01

Good day. Welcome to Mindpilot. This is Dr. Jana Price-Sharps's. Happy New Year. We're going to talk about setting New Year's resolutions. And how do you do that? How do you set an effective goal for the year? And most of you, well, maybe some of you, I don't know if it's most of you, have already given this a lot of thought because we're already in the first week of January. But what are some important factors to consider when you're setting your goals? So I've invited Dr. Matthew Sharps back to be with us, and we're going to talk about how you do some evaluations of where you're at now so you can decide where you're going and how you're going to get there. So part of that is thinking about how to break down where you're at right now. Because it's really easy to get into automatic functioning where you're just kind of doing the same thing every day and not really thinking about is this working? Is this a good idea? Or should I change what I'm doing? And so I asked Dr. Sharps to come and talk a little bit about feature-intensive analysis and how you can use that to begin to break down some of your habit patterns. So, Dr. Sharps, could you tell our viewers or our listeners, I guess I should say, what we mean by GFI and feature-intensive evaluations?

Speaker 1:49

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Well, human reasoning, human thinking, human decision making operate on a continuum, and I've published quite a bit on this in several books and a number of papers, okay? Between the gestalt, that's a German word that we usually mistranslate, but it's the way we do it, as configuration or whole, looking at the whole thing, okay? As opposed to each feature-intensive processing at the other end, where you look at each detail of whatever it is. Feature-intensive processing is slower, but it gets you where you need to be a lot faster, by which I mean this. Suppose you set a New Year's resolution that you are going to do this, this, and this activity every morning, okay? That's as opposed to, you know how I am, I gotta stop being like that. How I am, I've got to stop being like that. That's the ultimate and gestalt. A specific stepwise plan is the ultimate and feature intensive. Now, if you want to apply that to the New Year's resolution, there's a few kind of important things. Well, one thing that I've seen over and over again, um, people often make New Year's resolutions that aren't their own. Somebody else thinks they ought to do this, or the the internet thinks they ought to do this, or TV thinks they want to do this. So they'll then set some goal that they really have no interest in, but it makes them feel like they're part of whatever dynamic it is that suggests they do this. But we often don't realize that because we think in gestalt terms. You know, it's it's good for my health. In what way is it good for your health? How is it going to benefit you? And is it even a good idea? I remember talking to a friend of mine who's in the in the in a medical field, talking about how people suddenly resolve to get this a massive amount of really heavy-duty yard work or working their you know, their farm and their house done this weekend, and they're in their 60s or 70s, and that's when he sees them to deal with the orthopedic problems that's created. So the first thing is to make a feature-intensive analysis of the resolution itself. Is it what I want to do? And is it reasonable? Is it something that can be done? Okay? Myself, I'm in my 60s, I'm six foot eight, and I weigh 250 pounds. If I resolve to take up ballet, what am I going to dance? Rhino Lake, dozens will die. Okay? I also have had glasses as thick as Coke bottles since I was seven years old. I suddenly decide I want to be a test pilot. Usually you want your test pilots to be able to find the aircraft. These are not reasonable things. Now, they I these are obviously I'm being facetious, these are extremes. But it's amazing how many people set unrealistic and extreme goals for themselves and a feature-intensive analysis. Why am and why am I doing this? What is it going to take? Is it in my best interest? Is it a good idea? Yeah, I know somebody else, a loved one, or vague forces on the internet that seem to be your friends. Are they the ones who want me to do this? Maybe maybe I'd have to spend a lot of money to do this. Maybe what are the motivations of the people who want me to do whatever it is? But the way you would approach this, or the resolution or the desire to do it, is in a feature-intensive manner. Now, writing things down is enormously helpful, okay? In feature-intensive terms, not well, it'd be good for me. It'd be good for my health. Well, somehow maybe it would make money. Write down the steps, write down what the goal is, what its benefit is to you, not in terms of it'll be good for my health. What exactly is this gonna do for me? And how feasible is it? Is it something I can do? People tell you you can do anything you want to, right? I am never going to be a ballet dancing test pilot. It's not gonna happen. So that's people say you can be anything you want to. I don't think they're doing you a great service. You don't want to crush people's dreams, but sometimes the dreams just aren't too bright. Okay? But suppose the dream is fairly bright. You have a specific weight goal, a specific health goal, specific exercise goal. Well you want to write down what the steps are in a linear order, order of time, and what those steps involve. Okay. And you also, and this is something that you'd be much better addressing than I am, imagery is your friend in making a feature-intensive analysis. Not to understand, gosh, if I could do this, I'd be happy. Okay. But image what this course of action will do for you on a feature-intensive basis. If I engage in these activities, what will be the result? What will be the ramifications for my life? And again, not in the sense of, hey, that'd be like totally good. But in the sense of, these are the benefits. Whoops, these are the possible uh problems I might have with this. Now, are those realistic? Maybe I'm magnifying my problems. Feature-intensive analysis of exactly what are they? I've got this huge list of things I have to do, my gosh, there's so many of them. Well, you write them down, and it turns out you've got actually seven things you can do. And you schedule them, it turns out it's going to take you three or four hours over a two-month period. I'll list these things what these things, sorry. Listing goals and the sub goals to get them in a systematic linear way, always with reference to imaging of what the goal is, what you want to do, and what the probable future. Now you can't nobody can predict the future, obviously. Okay. But what is this thing going to do for me in the future? What are the ramifications? What are the benefits?

Speaker 1 6:54

That's great. And I think you're absolutely right. One of the things that I see people do over and over is they make their goals and they make them very overwhelming. Like you said, sometimes they're not even their goal. They're somebody else's goal. Um and sometimes it's maybe not realistic with your schedule, what you have going on, maybe your physical health. And so thinking about a feature-intensive analysis, let's say you do want to lose weight. So should you go on a 500 uh calorie diet every day? Or should you just start adding in some foods that are good for you? And you know, a lot of times simple things like drinking a glass of water before you eat begins to fill you up. Adding in a salad before you eat the main course, you're going to eat less, you know. So that's why that feature-intensive analysis is really important because you can make these small incremental changes that are much more effective than starving yourself or going to the gym six hours a day, or whatever, you know, kind of thing that somebody sold you or your best friend is doing, or somebody told you would be a good idea. And so it's the same thing with marriages, it's the same thing with work. Radical changes almost never work. Um sometimes they can work. I mean, if let's say you suddenly find out you have a terrible physical condition and you have to take immediate radical action, okay, that's a little bit different. But changes in habit patterns, the more you can make those small adjustments over time, the more successful you're likely to be. Because if one day you eat really well, you can go, hey, I did a pretty good job that day. And then the next day you kind of think about what you want to do that day, and you have another day of success. That builds on itself. Where if you make a radical shift, a lot of times people, after three days of not being able to do it, they go, well, this screw this. I'm not going to do this. This isn't going to work. Why am I even trying? So really thinking about what do you want to accomplish this year? What's important to you? Now, what's important to everybody else? What is important to you? Where do you want to be one year from now? What do you want to accomplish, both maybe physically, spiritually, your relationship with significant others, at work, at home. What's important to you? Pick three or four things and then make a plan and make a systematic plan. It doesn't mean that 6.05 in the morning you have to be up and doing X, Y, Z. No, that isn't what I mean. I mean make a plan. Okay, within the next 30 days, these are the three tasks I'm going to complete. Uh, and these are the days I'm going to do that. Okay, that's a doable plan. Uh, make it reasonable, make it fit your schedule, make it fit what you want, and make it so that it's not so overwhelming that you feel completely overburdened and you just stop. Okay. But make that plan because we do know from a lot of research that people that plan for success are much more successful. But as Dr. Sharps said, you've got to figure out what that means to you. For one person, it may mean having a better marriage. For another person, it might mean being in better physical health. That may mean working out in the gym, but it also may just be doing some yoga and changing the way you're eating. Who knows? I don't know what those things are for you. But I do know that the people that make those commitments and look at those commitments weekly. Keep that in front of you. You know, I tell people I'm a big fan of three by five cards. And if you've listened to me at all, you've heard about three for three by five cards. What are the top four things you want to accomplish this year? Write those on a card and keep that in front of you. So every couple of days you run in front of that card. Maybe you put it up on your bathroom mirror. Maybe you put it in your calendar if you still have a regular calendar. Maybe you take a picture of it and make it your phone uh screen, you know, so that you're seeing it every day. As a reminder, oh yeah, this is what I'm working on. This is my priority for this year. This is where I want to be in the following year and keep it in front of you. You can do this, you can have a good life, you can make changes, but you have to set it up so that you successfully make those changes. And you need you use the psychological technologies that we talk about to support you doing that. It's gonna be really important. Dr. Sharps, do you have any final thoughts for this?

Speaker 12:17

Yeah, because often the feature-intensive analysis will lead you to your plan, okay? And you're gonna go out and you're gonna definitely get the fence painted or the shed repaired on Thursday, such and such a date, and then it rained. Okay? You have to have flexibility built in, even though you're doing a feature-intensive determinative thing. If it rains, you can't do it. And lots of people will get an investment. We call it cognitive dissonance, the more you pay into something, the more you tend to really value it. And damn it all, I can't get my shed repaired and my fence painted. So schedule an alternate day. You have to but I can't do that because on that day I'm going to do something else. If you find that your plans are conflicting, you've got too many things going on at once, a few of these things may need to be extended in time, or the ones that don't have to be done or done immediately, you may want to drop. Now that's easy as done. Lots of people will do this and then they immediately put it in their phone because that's our habit, or in their laptop. And that will not work. I'm sorry to say that it seems very anti-technological. To put it in the phone of a laptop is not going to be very effective because it'll be behind another screen with a dancing cat on it. Okay? So what Dr. Prep's saying is absolutely correct, I think. The three by five cart, or the thing that is before you all the time, or program your computer or your phone to pop that up in front of you so you're not looking at a cat video instead. You have to have access. We've done research showing that unless information is available within uh half a minute or so, within reason what we used to define as short-term memory of the decision, it doesn't have any effect. So you have to have this accessible to you. If it goes into the phone, make sure it's going to pop up off out of the phone at you enough that you can that you'll see it. Okay? That's why I uh Dr. Breisharp is a very big fan of the three by five cards, so am I. Something that will present this to you visually, to your imageric system, that you can say, okay, I have a feature-intensive plan to do what I'm going to do, but it's flexible enough to deal with reality.

Speaker 1 14:26

About twelve years ago, I decided to write a book, and I was gonna have it done in a year. And then I got sick. And then I got better, so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get it done next year. And then I got sick again. And this went on for 11 years. I mean, I had all kinds of things happen. I had sepsis three times, I had COVID five times, and it was just every time I thought, okay, I'm gonna get this done, then something else would happen. I finally got it done, but I kept it in front of me. My amazing guy that works with us, his name's Frankie, and he does all our uh, you know, like the pictures for the podcast. He does all of those, he sets up the podcast, he actually made the book cover for my book. And so I had him make the book cover, and I took a picture of it and I made it my wallpaper for my phone. And I really like pretty wallpaper on my phone. I would not allow myself to change the wallpaper until I got that darn book done. Because every time I picked up my phone, what did I see? The book cover. And I was like, okay, okay, I've got to get this done. It kept it in front of me. But if I had just made a little note somewhere on a calendar in my phone, no, I'm not gonna see that. But that put it in my face. And that's what I meant. It if you take a three by five card and you take a picture of it and you make it your wallpaper, you're going to see it every time you pick up your phone. I'm not saying you have to do that, but somehow, somehow, keep your goals in front of you, keep them alive, so to speak, and keep chipping away at them. It took me 11 years, but I got it done. And it my plan was not 11 years. It absolutely was not, but it was important to me because I wanted to write a book for all of you. I wanted you to have something that would help you begin to improve your life. And so Dr. Sharps and I wrote this book, and I'm hoping it is helping some of you. But the reality is you've got to keep it in front of you. And if you don't keep it in front of you, they fade away.

Speaker 16:45

Yeah, that's a beautiful example, Setha, we really didn't touch on. It's gonna sound a little weird. The feature-intensive analysis of a feature-intensive analysis. Because what Dr. Priceharps did with her phone was a feature-intensive analysis of how to use technology properly. If she'd just said, Oh, it's in my phone, so I've got it, that's geschalt. It wouldn't work because it's gonna pop up behind a dancing cat video. But putting it as her wallpaper, she's gonna see that every time she uses the phone, she uses the phone all the time. You can do the same thing with a laptop, with any other technology, but you have to make that just as she did, that analysis of how is the technology going to support this? And the way you want it supported is in a feature-intensive, imageric manner. So it comes to you on a daily basis as good, okay? As a visual image saying, Okay, oh yeah, I want to get this done. And then you enter into the feature-intensive analysis, okay, what are the steps to get this done? Whoops, something has happened. I can't get it done today. Okay, I'm moving it to next Friday. But you don't just let it die.

Speaker 1 17:56

And sometimes the goals may be changes in how you are functioning in your everyday life. One of my very favorite speakers, and I won't use his name because I don't have permission to, but uh he speaks at our retreats all the time. And one of the things he did one year on his computer is he made his screensaver. Half of it said no, and the other half said, not my problem. And I thought that was just awesome because it's a great reminder, set the boundaries and let go of other people's chaos and stuff, right? And so, but that was his screensaver. And so every time he looked at his computer, it was a reminder, no, I don't have to say yes to everything. And I also don't have to take on other people's stuff. And so it was a it was a great way to begin to change his thought processes. And I believe uh Dr. Sharps, she did something based on one of our participants in our retreat.

Speaker 19:04

Yeah, it's something one of our participants who took the SGFI concept very seriously and started using the technique. And I thought, hey, I'm I'm gonna do that too. It's a great idea. Because like me, he had to go to specific meetings that let's how shall I put this was completely unproductive. And you'll never ever see anything done correctly and no stupid ideas ever allowed to die. And I used to say, well, wait a minute, we can't do this, we can't do whatever else. And all I would do is make people mad, and they'd come up with something even weirder, okay? So when I have to go to those when I had to go to those meetings, I was uh during the COVID period, you used the over the computer using Zoom. I think we can say we can say Zoom, I think, right? Well, I just wrote an high contrast. Don't put dark blue ink on purple posts. You won't see it. Black on white is best, black on yellow or light blue is okay, dark blue and yellow something, but we have contrast. I my post is happening to be yellow, and in dark blue ink I wrote no, period. Just no, period. And during those meetings, I stick it up in the upper right-hand corner of my computer screen. Okay? And so somebody will say something just so completely divorced from the world. My God, you imagine line dancing hyenas, okay, whatever, it makes no sense whatsoever. Um, and I'm about to say, oh no, you can't do that for God's sake. No. There's nothing I know. If I could do something, I would. But through long experience, this is not going to help. So just no. I just back off. I don't get involved. Okay? When people are doing things that are just completely impossible. No. No. Now, just writing no, what do I mean? No sponge cake, you know, no journeys to the Orinoco. What am I writing no about? Okay. Well, I know that. That's that's that goes into parts of cognitive psychology. We really don't have the time or really the reason to go into. But I know what I'm talking about. You might not. You'll see my computer, it says no up at the corner. What the heck does that mean? But I do know what it means. Don't get involved in the non-productive thing, is that all it's going to do is enrage people. It's not going to do me any good either, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Now that's that's an ex- that's an example of somebody that simply negates useless action. But you can use the same principle in a variety of ways, right? If you coming home and a f after some of the some of the Dr. Breisharp's listeners are in in uh first response services, you might put that three by five card, tape it to the inside of your door with instructions to yourself. You probably nobody else is going to know what they mean. If you write how do you feel, that may not mean do you have the measles. It may mean am I in shape right now to deal with what I know will happen when I go through the door with my specific family, my specific problems. Maybe I need to go, and I'm making this up as I go along, right? But if we talk about this in our retreats, but you might and to number two there after how do you feel might be if bad, comma, ducks. Okay, now that's what the hell? But you personally go down to the pond and feed the ducks when you're feeling bad. Maybe you need to go down there for 20 minutes. Minutes and feed these darn ducks, right? And then number three, make certain that, of course, you call your spouse and let them know what you're doing and why you're doing it in a feature-intensive manner. And these these external aids to cognition, to decision-making and thinking, they're very, very helpful. And I think you find them extraordinarily helpful in terms of maintaining resolutions, whether new years or not, things that you need to make these life changes, that if they're genuine goals, the your goals, and they're reasonable and important goals, they'll keep you on them. And they're very, very helpful. They've been tried and they've proven to work.

Speaker 1 22:37

So often changes can be small. They don't have to be major life changes. For instance, maybe you hate going to very large stores and you get overwhelmed and there's lots of people and lots of screaming kids. And if you're a first responder, you probably go into serious hypervigilance and fight or flight responses. Okay, so maybe you get whatever it is you need, you put it in your cart, and then you let your spouse check out. You go to the car. You don't stand in the long line that takes forever with people bumping into you. And then when your spouse gets to the car, you help them unload the car. But there might be little tiny changes like that that make your life so much better. A lot of times they're very small things, just like the no, no, I'm not going to say that because it's not going to help the situation. You know, if I see my spouse doing something in a way it's not going to kill them, it's not going to hurt anybody, but it isn't the way I would do it, let it go. That might be a resolution for the year. It might be, you know what, I'm going to let go. If if that's the way they want to do it, it's okay. It isn't my way. My way may be more efficient. But does it really matter? One of the best questions I ever heard is in a month or in a week or in six months, is this going to matter? If it doesn't matter, then why are you making a big deal out of it? You know, and so that's part of that process of letting go. Now, obviously, if they're going to get hurt, that's a different thing. You know, if you if you see a toddler running towards the Clorox bottle, then yes, you need to take action. But there's times that we need to alter our behavior a little bit that will make home life better, that will make work life better, that will make our lives better. And a lot of times those are small, even sometimes subtle changes. So when you think about your New Year's resolutions, don't necessarily think about major overhauls. Think about small incremental things that you can do that are going to make you happier, that are going to make your relationships better, that are going to open up communication, that is going to allow you to calm down and let go of some the chaos that is the world. Because you deserve to be happy. You deserve to have a good life. But part of that is you're going to have to make a decision to have a good life. And sometimes that means making incremental changes so that you can have that good life. Empower yourself. Take an inventory of where you're at and start putting into place small changes that will help you. I hope you have a wonderful new year. I pray many blessings for you and your family. Take care of yourselves. Thank you for what you do. This is This is Dr. Jana Price-Sharps from MindPilot.