A Wide Net Approach to New Year’s Resolutions

Vlog

A couple of successful bloggers have advised me that my posts should always include a vlog version. I think this advice totally makes sense if the blogger is really good looking. As for myself, I’m a bit skeptical anyone could really enjoy this, but I’ll do my best. Tip: the below vlog is also a podcast if you don’t look. And it becomes a regular old blog if you scroll down.

Introduction

In years past in these pages, I’ve offered general suggestions on how to formulate New Year’s Resolutions. Well, it never worked … the closest I’ve had to getting a comment like “this changed my life!” is “This unique in fact perhaps even a very good arrange that i believe it or not in fact really enjoyed looking into. It is not necessarily consequently routine that i range from the substitute for verify a precise detail. trusted medicine.”

So this year, I’m taking the cast-a-wide-net approach: I’ll just throw a ton of suggested Resolutions out there and maybe a few will grab you. It’s kind of like the speed-dating concept.

Personal brand

Stop worrying about cultivating your “personal brand.” Consider that every so often a winery tries to produce a really special wine but loses their nerve at the last minute, and releases it under a fictitious label, only to see that wine win all kinds of awards. Shouldn’t your intrinsic value, if any, also speak for itself? 

COVID tents

Do you live in a community that sets up outdoor tents to get around the pandemic-instituted prohibition on indoor dining? This is exactly like tenting a house for termite mitigation, except instead of fumigating with poisonous methyl bromide they let diners bring their own coronavirus-rich CO2. This practice is pretty much Kevorkian. They should call them Superspreader Tents. Don’t go in there.

Shampoo

Stop reading the instructions on the shampoo bottle. This product is just not that complicated. Really … you’ve got this.

Physical comedy

Stop syncing up your loud belches and/or bursts of flatulence with fist pumps, as if you were cranking them out. Family members witnessing your little spectacle probably don’t find it nearly as funny as you do. I suppose you could resolve to do this only when you’re alone, but really … ask yourself if that makes any more sense.

Hacks

Stop calling things “hacks” that don’t represent a major circumvention. If you use yogurt instead of butter in box mac ‘n’ cheese, that’s not a hack. That’s a tweak. Using the uncooked elbows for your kid’s art project, and then using the powdered cheese mix as a propellant in an improvised explosive device—now that’s a hack. I hasten to point out that I don’t advocate building IEDs. For that matter, I don’t advocate box mac ‘n’ cheese.

Eating

If you find yourself short of breath while eating, you might be going too fast. Another sign is if you keep getting grains of rice or short bits of noodle caught in your nasal passages. Considering eating a bit more slowly.

Crickets

Crickets themselves are fine. But saying “crickets” to draw attention to a general lack of response to something someone has said (e.g., a joke) is both hackneyed and stupid. Just be frank: “Clearly nobody is very impressed with you. I hope you feel bad about yourself. I, meanwhile, am quite clever.”

Mute button

Did you know that the COVID pandemic has sped up global digital transformation by at least ten years? Wait, come back, I’m sorry, I was blathering ironically!

But seriously: we might as well face the fact that videoconferences aren’t going anywhere. So how about mastering the mute button? So you know at all times whether you’re muted or not? So you don’t ever have to say, “Sorry, I was talking on mute”? And nobody ever has to say, “Bob, you’re muted”? And so nobody hears you bawling out your kid or your pet? Practice a lot, do drills, hold a clinic, I don’t care what it takes—just become aces at this because things are really getting annoying.

Timing

When you pee, stop timing the operation by counting in your head, “One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand …” unless your doctor has recommended this.

Cleaning the drain

When you scoop the wad of hair out of the bathtub drain before your shower, stop throwing the wet clump at the tile wall where it will stick. If you’ve been doing this for fifteen years and your family members still haven’t taken the hint, they’re not going to. Just throw the wad away, or better yet, recycle it.

Zeal inflation

If every single thing you recommend is the most amazing thing ever, you may be overdoing your enthusiasm. Consider ratcheting it down a bit: instead of “Oh my God, you have got to try their burger,” consider something like, “I really think you should try the burger.”

Veganism

Look, vegans, I grant that you have the moral upper-hand. But please, no meat-shaming. Meat is just a weakness I have. Besides, by insisting on grass-fed beef I’m helping to create a market for it, to gradually shift the ranching industry. What example are you setting? Carnivores just think you’re crazy!

Pizza

Stop eating pizza with a fork and knife, even if it’s deep-dish. Consider that Miss Manners gives you her blessing to eat asparagus with your fingers. Pizza is finger food. So what if you make a little mess? That’s what napkins are for.

When you order takeout pizza, ask them to cut the pie into 12 slices instead of just 8. This makes it easier to share and may slightly increase your chances of having leftovers. (Note: this is not a “hack.”)

Bedtime

Make a playlist of calm, mellow songs to listen to before bed. This probably won’t keep your dreams from featuring hard rock or heavy metal soundtracks (which is likely a sign of too much stress in your life) but it’s worth a shot.

Names

When emailing a colleague you don’t know very well, whose name is Michael or Christopher or Elizabeth, stop fretting about whether you should be addressing him or her as Mike or Chris or Liz. If this person can’t put his or her preferred name in his or her auto-signature, that’s not your problem. Also, if you have an Aussie colleague who has always gone by Mick but suddenly wants to go by Michael, probably in an effort to be taken more seriously, don’t give him the satisfaction. Keep calling him Mick. You’re grandfathered.

Filling

When you fill a carafe or bottle, and the rising water makes a slightly flute-y whooshing sound that gets higher in pitch as the level rises, stop pursing your lips as though they were making the sound. This is ridiculous and if your fiancée saw you doing this she’d break off the engagement.

What do you do?

Have an unhelpful answer all staged up for when someone asks you what you do for a living. Some examples:

• I do bratwurst rehab.
• I do PR for a money laundering firm in the Caymans.
• I stuff envelopes for a blockchain startup incubator in Bangalore.
• I’m a cattle buyer for Office Depot.
• I refurbish gnome ornaments.

Then, turn it around with a more direct version of the same question: “What good are you?”

Dressing

When you put on a jacket over a sweater, hold down the cuffs of the sweater sleeves with your ring and middle finger. Otherwise, the sleeves will get all bunched up. If you don’t grasp what I’m saying, watch any child put on a jacket. They’ve all figured this out for themselves; what’s your problem?

Proud parent

Stop humble-bragging about your kid(s). Humble-bragging is still bragging. In fact, answering a simple question honestly can still be bragging. If somebody asks where your kid is going to college and the honest answer is “MIT,” you cannot answer honestly without being boastful. And don’t settle for a dodge, either. If you say “near Boston” that’s still bragging because you know what the next question will be. The only acceptable answer is “He’s enrolled in the DeVry Technical Institute,” even if it’s not true.

Bucket list

Stop using the term “bucket list.” It’s lame. And no, adding air quotes doesn’t help. Just stop. We don’t even need this phrase because nobody is actually very interested in things you hope to do during your lifetime. Get over yourself.

Vlogging

Before you record your vlog, do a 10-second trial recording and scrutinize it to make sure you don’t have a weird, wiry, paper-white hair growing right out the edge of your ear, or conspicuous dandruff on your dark garment, or anything else that’s grossly human. Also, as you record, resist the temptation to periodically moisten your lips with your tongue, which makes you look like a frog. In short, don’t make your vlog any more painful to watch than it has to be.

Superstitions

Stop beating yourself up over indulging a silly superstition, like not putting a hat on a bed just because you watched Drugstore Cowboy back in 1989. Yes, superstitions are silly, but as habits go they’re pretty harmless, so why waste brain cycles worrying about it? Just don’t embroil others in your superstition. Keep it to yourself.

Fever?

If you need to sneeze while using an oral thermometer, take the dang thing out of your mouth and cover your face completely. Trying to keep the thermometer in and just cover your nose isn’t going to work—no kleenex can withstand that kind of focused spray. Yes, you’ll have to start all over again taking your temperature. That’s just how it goes.

Cheers

Stop fretting about using “cheers” to sign off an email even though you’re not British. We Americans stole the rest of their language; why shouldn’t this expression be fair game too?

But seriously

Here are some less flippant suggestions:

• Stay safe during the pandemic
• Consider donating blood this year
• If you’re over 50, get a colonoscopy
• Learn how to cure your hiccups
• Switch to a proper razor
• Adopt the “Dutch reach” when getting out of your car
•  Stop pushing STEM
• Learn self-compassion
• Master multitasking
• Cut out cream and sugar
• Avoid bad movies
• Develop a family Internet use policy
• Avoid phishing attacks
• Switch to a wax chain lube
• Hold yourself more accountable
• Avoid bad restaurants
• Be ready for an earthquake
• See the bigger picture
• Switch to a better keyboard layout
• Stop worrying about goals
• Try to have more fun

Epilogue

Is there actually any point in this annual ritual? Has anybody ever stuck with his or her Resolutions? Well, I looked back at my own from last year, fearing the worst, and was surprised to find that I’d stuck with some of them … sort of:

#1: Get a colonoscopy … it’s time – Done!

#2: Work with a physical therapist – This was supposed to be for my back as a preventive thing. I did end up working with a physical therapist, quite a bit in fact, but because I broke my collarbone. So … done? Sort of?

#3: Research 401(k) catch-up contributions – I actually looked into these, discovered it’s kind of complicated, and decided to leave well enough alone. Done? Ish?

Here’s a Resolution my brother Max suggested last year, which was prescient to say the least:

Be alone with someone else who likes to be left alone and leave each other alone.

Nailed it!

Further reading

• New Year’s Resolutions
• One-Size-Fits-All New Year’s Resolution
• New Year’s Resolutions - Dental Hygiene Edition
• New Year’s Resolutions - Let’s Get It Right This Time

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New Year’s Resolutions - Let’s Get It Right This Time

Introduction

There’s a lot to hate about January. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s probably cold. Meanwhile, the holidays, though they can be a grind, at least represent a slowdown at work—but now they’re over, it’s a new year, and corporate leadership is all gung-ho about plans and quotas and everything. And on top of it all, everybody is talking about New Year’s Resolutions.

Okay, that last statement was untrue—not “everybody” is talking about Resolutions. But if just a few people are, especially in the media, it can sure seem like everybody. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. In this post I’ll provide some strategies for grappling with this annoying ritual. Don’t worry—I’ll try to be more snide than sanctimonious.

Recycling old resolutions – fair game?

When I bothered to research New Year’s Resolutions for a previous post, I found that most goals were pretty predictable: lose weight, exercise more, drink less alcohol, get out of debt, spend more time with family. Probably not a lot of first-timers, then … more like recidivism, people renewing their resolve to improve in ways they failed at the previous year. No wonder these Resolutions are such a drag! So what is to be done?

Well, one obvious solution is just to give up. I often tell my kids, “Look, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that anything difficult isn’t worth doing.” (This isn’t my own idea; I think I’m quoting, or at least paraphrasing, Homer Simpson.) Face it, if you’ve been in debt for ten years, you’re probably not gonna suddenly make it into the black just because it’s January and you’ve resolved to do so. And if you want to spend more time with family but both your kids are teenagers, good luck with that, too. I’m not trying to be defeatist … but maybe you should scale back or jettison the perennial good intentions if they just frustrate you year after year. Be compassionate with yourself!

Did you see what I did just now, when I said that I didn’t want to be defeatist, even though I was totally being exactly that? That’s a sophisticated literary technique called “bullshit.” If I were a Ph.D. I’d probably call it “being slightly disingenuous.” But I kind of meant it. I really, actually don’t want to be defeatist, not when we’re still only in the first week of January. Let’s try harder.

Improving your approach

Just because you’ve failed at a Resolution before doesn’t mean there’s no hope … maybe your approach was wrong. A friend of mine sends me articles he writes for his Counseling website, and the thing is, I don’t mind because they’re actually useful. They’re also really brief. (I could probably learn from that, but I refuse.) He writes here, in his article on Resolutions, that it’s really helpful to “create a social accountability network” by enlisting friends to help cheer you on when you make progress and/or shame you when you fall off. I think this makes tons of sense.

I’d been employing the accountability strategy to some degree already, in my effort to lose weight. I have always used the buddy system when tackling my watered-down version of the South Beach Diet (click here for details). But after reading Ceely’s article I doubled down and looked for ways to “gamify” my program. So now my Sloth Beach buddy and I have a new tab on our shared spreadsheet where we summarize our meals (Good vs. OK vs. Crap) and color-code them red or green. We even have a rudimentary scoring system: 2 points for a Good meal, 1 point for an OK meal (only two meals a day count), plus we subtract a point for Crap, add 2 points for a Large workout, add 1 point for a Medium workout, and tally it up. On a good day you can score six points. On a bad day you may come up negative.

Is this working? Hell yeah! I applied the scoring system retroactively to last year so we could compare our results. So far this year, my average score is up 31% and my buddy’s is up 80%—no  joke! Yes, the year is young, but we’re off to a roaring start.

A low-tech approach

Obviously the above example only applies to nerdy people who don’t mind infusing yet another aspect of their lives with high-tech tools. So for the rest of you, here’s another case study: I’ve resolved this year to manage stress better, and (given my poor track record in this area historically) I’m trying two new methods: focused breathing and a mantra. (You can’t get much lower-tech than a mantra.)

You might think I’m joking, or that I’m a joke, but the thing is, as I researched stress reduction I kept stumbling on articles expounding the virtues of a mantra, and I’m willing to try anything. I’m pretty early in the process and am still deciding what my personal mantra should be. Apparently it doesn’t really matter what the word or phrase is; many that people select (e.g., “Aum,” “Namah Shivaya”) aren’t in their native tongue, and some are almost like babble. It’s the repetition that does the trick, I’m advised. So last night, when I was tossing and turning in bed, stressed out after a hard day, I started trying out different phrases. Nothing worked until the edges of my consciousness became ragged and my subconscious started to take over. Then a suitable mantra suddenly popped into my head: “Kick your ass, kid!”

This is a phrase dredged up from my past. When I was like ten years old, I got into an altercation at the roller rink with a bigger kid. He was a total stranger to me. His name was like Shane or Shaz or Shalom or something and he was a friend of one of my schoolmates, Brian Bogart, whom I’d previously gotten in a fistfight with during a slumber party. Now, at the roller rink, Brian essentially sicced Shane on me, seeing an opportunity for revenge. I baited Shane a bit, even though I was kind of scared, because I knew my big brother Max wasn’t far away. Sure enough, Max showed up in the nick of time, he and Shane started pushing and shoving and mouthing off. “Kick your ass, kid!” Shane shouted a couple of times. Max threw this phrase back in Shane’s face, mocking him. Just as they were about to start throwing punches, we all got thrown out of the roller rink. That really sucked because Mom had dropped Max and me off there for the whole afternoon, so we were basically standing around in the parking lot for the next hour. Needless to say this incident made “Kick your ass, kid!” part of our family lore.

I totally get that “Kick your ass, kid!” seems like the wrong tone for a mantra, and you probably think I’m being facetious here, mocking the whole mantra concept, but really I’m not. I’m not against finding a new mantra that’s a bit calmer, but the thing is, “Kick your ass, kid!” really did the trick last night. I just kept working on my breathing—this “square breathing” technique where you inhale for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, exhale for four counts, and then pause again for four counts to complete the cycle—while saying (in my head), “Kick your ass, kid!” over and over in a very non-threatening way, kind of droning it. Four counts per breathing step, four steps in the cycle, and a four-syllable mantra ... perfect. I’d breathe in, with the phrase counting off the beats for me, then hold my breath through another iteration, then breathe it out—“Kick your ass, kid!”—before completing the cycle with one more (albeit silent) incantation of it during the pause. It was like magic … I was asleep in no time.

(Even upon reflection I find that “Kick your ass, kid!” holds up well as a mantra. Had I been better educated at age ten, I might have summed up that roller rink altercation, and the parking lot purgatory it begat, and in fact all the fights teens get into everywhere, and how that turns into posturing and one-upmanship in later life, by quoting Ecclesiastes: “All is vanity.” That was one of the candidates I’d come up with when first casting about for a mantra. But phonetically speaking, “All is vanity” is just not as satisfying as “Kick your ass, kid!”)

The brain-dead simple approach

Okay, this breathing and mantra regimen—though low-tech—isn’t exactly easy either. You want a super-simple way to be more successful in your Resolution? Employ an “affordance.” My wife came across this term in some book. It has to do with a change you make to your environment to encourage and facilitate a desired behavior. (Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it.)

An affordance can be extremely basic. For example, if you want to work out more often, and are looking for a way to hold yourself accountable, that doesn’t mean you have to keep a really complicated training diary complete with heart rate and power data. You can just get a fresh wall calendar and record your workouts with a check mark. This is positive feedback, and by hanging the calendar where you’re sure to see it, you make it into an affordance. My family has a shared workout calendar posted in our phone room. This is perhaps the simplest “social accountability network” imaginable.

What if you’re too perfect to need a Resolution?

Look, I know there are people out there who so totally have their acts together, it’s impossible for them to formulate a single New Year’s Resolution. Maybe you’re just too perfect and there’s no need to change a thing!

I’ll confess, when I look at my life every January and think of what to fix, I don’t see a lot of low-lying fruit myself. Though I chafe at having a belly where there was none before, my actual body-mass index is spang in the middle of normal. I exercise a lot and I’ve never smoked. Medical studies suggest I should perhaps drink more alcohol than I do. I’m no further in debt than anybody fortunate enough to own real estate. But to assume everything is fine is simply a failure of the imagination. If nothing else, I’m a year older and that automatically suggests some Resolutions:

1. Get a colonoscopy … it’s time
2. Work with a physical therapist – learn some spine exercises I can do regularly, to lower my odds of randomly throwing out my back
3. Research 401(k) catch-up contributions (which I’m entitled to now that I’ve turned 50)

I’m lucky enough that if I’m ever tempted to leave well enough alone in January, I have my brother Max for inspiration. Most years he comes up with new fewer than a hundred Resolutions, many of which could easily apply to me. Here are some highlights from his fresh 2020 batch:

9. Be alone with someone else who likes to be left alone and leave each other alone.

11. Mom

19. Stop lying to the universe.

21. Stop dripping oil. Period.

49. If I see something, say something, and vice versa.

62. Increase popularity among non-college-educated white males.

65. Don’t eat hot dogs because dogs are sentient beings.

68. Become more sly, selfish, and manipulative but in a good way.

71. Be boring, but with a twist.

72. Learn to ignore impulses by fashioning a quick list of possible outcomes until the moment’s gone.

78. Go easy on myself. I’m a stupid dumb-ass, I make mistakes.

79. Take it easy on all stupid dumb-asses who make mistakes.

93. Scratch ear lobe in a way that doesn’t make it look as though I have bugs or mites. Make it sort of suggestive.

94. Find my secret talent and use it to exploit myself.

My brother sure makes it look easy, doesn’t he? If you’re lamenting (as I am) not being nearly that clever, well … maybe 2020 is the year you finally do something about it!

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Will Self-Compassion Make You a Wuss?

Introduction

Recently, my wife had me read a short article about self-compassion. Two things about this I found interesting: 1) the article, and 2) the fact of my wife’s recommending it. Obviously she feels I could be better at self-compassion, and I suppose I agree. So why shouldn’t I just have you read that article? One, I lost it. Two, it had the common flaw of trying to appeal to too broad an audience by being really brief—a series of five tiny nibbles that added up to an unsatisfying snack. In this post I’ll delve deeper, and ask a thorny question: why do I have so much trouble with this?

What’s wrong with self-compassion?

I guess to begin with I should define the term. Wikipedia’s description does a sufficient job: “Self-compassion is extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering.” It’s basically cutting yourself some slack.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this. Self-compassion leads to all kinds of benefits; Wikipedia lists life satisfaction, happiness, and emotional resilience, and the article I read said something about reduced inflammation.

And yet, something about self-compassion makes me instinctively bristle. Delving into this reaction, I’ll confess that to some degree, it’s simply a habit. I grew up the youngest of four boys, and if there’s a polar opposite to compassion, my brothers exercised it at every turn. If I hurt myself, or even if they hurt me, they would say, “Ohhhh, poor baby! Did that hurt? You poor, poor thing!” This was delivered with the most brittle, icy sarcasm available—which was a lot. To visibly suffer was to demand sympathy, which was treated as a shameful act.

Perhaps our father helped create this culture. I remember how, when I was 12, my brand-new bike was stolen during the few minutes I spent using a San-O-Let at a bike race. Far from expressing sympathy, my dad was livid. “If you had spent your money on a good lock instead of a fancy cycling cap, you’d still have your bicycle!” he thundered at me. This was a pretty typical scenario, so I guess I’m not surprised that my natural reaction to any personal failure is still self-flagellation.

But in a sense, my hesitation to grant myself some compassion isn’t wholly irrational. On a very conscious level, I take some issue with compassion in general, if it’s applied too generously. As I’ve written before in these pages, “For every person who pushes himself too hard and needs to lighten up, I’d say there are 10 who are just too complacent to push their comfort zone.” Something about self-compassion strikes me as defeatist—like, by the time you’re doling out compassion, you’ve kind of given up, haven’t you? Shouldn’t we temper our our magnanimous acceptance with an opposing effort to encourage and challenge?

This is all very abstract, so I’ll give an example. For the past few years, I’ve coached high school mountain biking. The afternoon before every race, our team rides the course. Early in the season, one of the new riders showed up for the pre-ride but suddenly balked. “Coach, I can’t race tomorrow,” he said. “I’m having trouble breathing.”

Nothing about asthma or bronchospasm was mentioned in this rider’s pre-season medical evaluation, and he looked fine to me. Was it time to be compassionate? Of course! I looked him right in the eye and said, “Wow, I’m really sorry you’re such a pussy.”

No, of course I didn’t really say that! (Just having a little fun here … this essay was starting to drag.) I decided compassion was indeed called for with regard to the obvious butterflies in this kid’s stomach, but I wasn’t ready to concede that he had a bona fide breathing problem. So I told him, “Hey, how about you go ahead with the pre-ride, see how that goes, and decide in the morning if you feel like you can race.” Well, once he got out on the course, he started having fun, gradually picked up the pace, and next thing you know he was leading the team. At the end I told him, “Hey, the way you were riding today, I sure hope you can race tomorrow.” Which he did. (I asked him afterward, “Are you glad you raced?” To which he grinned, “No.”)

How does this tough-it-out business play in my own life? Well, it definitely causes me stress. For example, when I bought a new dishwasher, I really wanted to just pay someone to install it and be done with it, but I’d have felt like a wuss. The uncharitable side of me demanded that I man up and figure it out for myself. I reached out to my brother, and though he’s far more supportive today than in the “Ohhhh, poor baby!” days, he wasn’t letting me off the hook, either. By egging me on, and in fact questioning my manhood, Bryan applied powerful pressure, which gave me the motivation to continue. If instead he’d shown the same compassion as my wife had (something like, “Just hire somebody … you have more important things to do”), I’d be out a bunch of money and would’ve missed out on the satisfaction of rising to the occasion (and blogging about it).

Another issue I have is that, given my privileged life, self-compassion can feel indulgent and even ungrateful. I’m lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, to have close family and friends, and to enjoy good health—and any one of these privileges ought to be enough to keep me from ever feeling sorry for myself. To accept others’ solicitude, or grant it to myself, feels like tempting fate … as though God might say (perhaps in my late father’s voice), “I’ll give you something to cry about!”

So … will self-compassion make you a wuss?

So is that it? Should stoicism and a hard line always trump compassion? Of course not. Self-compassion, I must admit, is often appropriate given the various assaults that even a life of privilege can wage on our emotional health. With all these gifts, happiness can seem almost compulsory—like anything short of flat-out elation, under these circumstances, is a kind of failure. We’re not such rational creatures that we can simply talk ourselves out of feeling inordinately bummed about this or that personal slight, unfulfilled ambition, or grey day. Whatever our blessings, it’s hard not to compare them to the better life and better self we could have if we could only just … just … whatever. With this in mind, I’m ready to advance the idea that self-compassion doesn’t just ease our burdens, lower our stress, and serve as a balm; it can actually make us stronger.

How? Well, first of all, self-compassion can help us stand up to our own egos when it comes to tackling something difficult. I’ll use writing as an example. Something about spending a lot of time with one’s own text is almost intrinsically soul-crushing. Several times already, during the composition of this essay, I’ve fought the temptation to throw up my hands and say, “This is boring! Nobody wants to read this! I should just stick with fart jokes!” And maybe you agree—but that shouldn’t stop me from trying, should it? Many a wannabe writer gets so caught up in self-editing and self-critiquing that he fails, or declines, to produce anything at all. If every wannabe succumbed to this self-doubt, we’d have no writers, and nothing to read. The fact that this blog exists attests to my charitable acceptance of “good enough.”

(Is “good enough” actually acceptable? I can’t help but to keep asking this. But it is acceptable, and here’s why: when I was trying to write back in high school, I was far worse at it than I am today … but I’m still glad I made those early efforts. For one thing, they document that time of my life, and where my head was, in a way that memory cannot. Also, because I know I’ve improved, I can have fun taking shots at my early stuff, as I’ve done here.)

In case you’ve never wanted to write, here’s a more universal example: sometimes, by forgiving our physical limitations—especially the ones imposed by age—we can set more modest fitness objectives for ourselves, and thus do something rather than nothing. As a longtime cyclist, I’m perennially drawn into the data-slave mentality of monitoring my performance throughout every ride. This habit has become progressively more discouraging as I age, to the point that not infrequently I’ll feel like giving up mid-ride and slinking home because I’m going so slow. But I’ve learned to temper this, and not just with self-talk (e.g., “Who cares, it’s a nice day and a gorgeous road”). I have learned, on those bad days, to ignore the heart rate and stopwatch altogether, by turning my bike computer to “the weather channel.”

This doesn’t mean I won’t reflexively glance at the device to see how I’m doing, but when I do I’m reminded to forget about performance. The thermometer reminds me I’m not in control, that I’m subject to global forces larger than myself. I’m letting myself off the hook.

My latest cycling breakthrough has been shortening my standard route, to the point that I often ride for less than an hour (which I’ve traditionally thought wasn’t even worth suiting up for). I’m acknowledging to myself, “I’m 50. I’m busy. I’m tired. South Park is a bloody hard climb. It’s enough.” Is this a cop-out? Not as much as the dangerous alternative: deciding I don’t have the time or energy for a proper ride so I’ll just stay home.

The beauty of this scaled-down approach is that sometimes it frees me to scale back up later. Half the time when I set out on the short ride, I end up feeling okay after all. And once I’ve got the adrenaline going,  I’ll throw in one more climb—a “bonus climb,” so I can take it as slow as I want—and next thing I know I’m drilling it up Canon Drive and ending up with a pretty sweet hit of endorphins.

Another way self-compassion defies self-indulgence: it takes us out of ourselves, if we approach it the right way. If the opposite of self-compassion is dwelling on our failures, we need to remind ourselves how this affects those around us. When we suffer, so do they. Too much of this and we become insufferably self-absorbed. When I fear I’m succumbing to this, I try look at my situation from a loved one’s point of view and see if it looks as bleak from there. If it doesn’t, that tells me something. Using this trick to forgive myself thus reduces my self-absorption.

Finally, self-compassion helps me be more honest with myself. How? Well, consider how hard it is to confess to something when you have no expectation of forgiveness. I mentioned already how unforgiving my dad was; need I mention that my brothers and I generally hid our blunders from him, even when we could have really used his help? By the same token, if we can’t learn to forgive ourselves when we fail, how can we expect to be really honest with ourselves?

In other words, we might stoop to self-deception if the alternative is too painful to face. For example, let’s say I get bawled out by my boss. If I’m afraid to concede that she may have a point, I’m not likely to take her criticism very well. Instead of seeing her perspective, I might succumb to that self-protective reflex—to feel wronged, to decide she’s a jerk, and to channel my inner Dilbert and shrug off the criticism. This isn’t self-compassion—it’s denial! On the flip side, if I can forgive myself and be honest, I’m more likely to see her point. In this way I can actually improve—so my ability to forgive myself, so that I can face my failure and learn from it, is more of a life tool than an indulgence.

So … we’re good here, right?

Of course it’s easy enough to spew forth all these platitudes (actually it’s not, I’m starting to gag), but putting them into practice is another matter. I suppose I wrote this pro-compassion tract as much to convince myself as to convince you, whoever you are. So I’ll make you a deal: if you promise not to silently mock me for this earnest essay, I’ll try to do the same.

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New Year’s Resolutions - Dental Hygiene Edition

Introduction

Every January, the temptation to write a blog post on New Year’s Resolutions is almost overwhelming. But my own resolutions are off-limits because a) you quite rightly don’t care about my shortcomings, and b) I don’t have any (resolutions, that is). But I can’t exactly write about your resolutions because a) I don’t know what they are, and b) you don’t have any (shortcomings). And yet, here we are.

Today, I’ll offer up a single new year’s resolution that I think is the best combination of being a) undeniably worthwhile, and b) utterly achievable. Since I don’t know whether this resolution will apply to you, I’ll also offer the benefits of its polar opposite. And for good measure, I’m also including five resolutions that all dental hygienists ought to take on.

Part 1 - Take better care of your teeth

So here is your New Year’s Resolution: take better care of your teeth. Why is this a good one? First off, it’s achievable. We’re talking about spending just a few extra minutes a day, which can make a huge difference in your oral health. (I know … it’s impossible to talk about dental hygiene without coming across as pedantic and square.)

If you don’t always brush, and/or seldom floss, then it’s time to face the fact that your teeth and gums are probably disgusting. If your parents spent a fortune on orthodontia, it’s a shame that you’re taking such poor care of their investment. And if you didn’t get orthodontia, your teeth need all the help they can get.

On the flip side, if you’re one of those people who is so scrupulous about oral care that you think you don’t need to visit the dentist, think again. Everybody should visit the dentist twice a year. If you have insurance coverage, use it—this won’t cost you a thing, because your insurance company cares (possibly more than you do) about preventing expensive repair work later. (If you don’t have dental insurance, here’s another New Year’s Resolution: get a real job!)

My grandfather died a week or so shy of his 101st birthday, with all his original teeth. That was impressive. My father, who recently died a bit shy of his 81st birthday, was not on the right track. It’s not that he didn’t take care of his teeth—he was in the second category, thinking he was above going to the dentist. Well, I saw into his mouth a lot toward the end, what with trying to read his lips when his voice was weak, spoon-feeding him, and eventually, administering morphine. His teeth were in shockingly bad shape. I probably shouldn’t be admitting this, but I found it a bit of a relief (or at least a silver lining) that, through death, my father was escaping a looming dental crisis.

Yes, you should do all you can to take care of your teeth at home—flossing, stimulating (more on this later), and brushing. But you can’t go it alone. Dentists and hygienists have special tools that get your teeth whiter and cleaner than you can, period. If you hate going to the dentist, is it because you’re afraid and/or ashamed? If so, let that be your wake-up call. Do a good enough job with your teeth that you can walk into the dental office with your head held high.

But this resolution isn’t just about avoiding things like root canals and crowns. It’s about avoiding food in your teeth and/or bad breath. This isn’t some selfish New Year’s Resolution that only addresses your personal quest for self-actualization; you’re doing all the people around you a favor by not being gross.

I use a gum stimulator (see photo above) after every meal, to work the crap out of the nooks and crannies between my teeth. It’s shocking how much my gum stimulator dredges up—food shrapnel that brushing and even flossing don’t get. Once you become aware of this detritus, which you’ve heretofore been flashing to the world after every meal, you should feel an intense retroactive embarrassment for all the times you didn’t use this simple tool.

Part 2 – Stop beating yourself up about dental hygiene

All right, calm down, I get it—there are readers to whom the resolution above simply doesn’t apply. If you’re one of them, congratulations. For you I have a special New Year’s Resolution: relax and stop beating yourself up.

Beating yourself up? Yes—I suspect that, if you’re like me, and dental hygiene is your life, you suffer a lot when you go to the dentist. Not because your gums bleed—they’re far too healthy for that—but because you don’t get the credit you deserve for all your good oral habits. Sure, you do sometimes—about half of my dental hygienists over the decades have worshipped me like a god, and all my dentists have—but you probably get a lot of unfounded criticism too. Being conscientious, you let this criticism get to you … but you shouldn’t. It’s not you … it’s them. Which brings me to the final section of this post.

Part 3 – Five New Year’s Resolutions for dental hygienists

The way some hygienists go on about my perceived failings as custodian of my teeth, I have to wonder what they say to people who eat too much sugar, and/or don’t floss, and/or (gasp) smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco. Their lectures must border on abuse: “You filthy degenerate, you don’t even deserve teeth!” Or maybe they go easy on the less diligent patients for fear of alienating them completely, while saving their scrutiny for arrogant patients like me who think they’re all that.

Look, I get that being a dental hygienist is a tough job, and these people have a big workload without a lot of socializing at the water cooler to break up the day. Surely lots of patients are a bit stressed out, and those with neglected mouths must be tough to take. But that doesn’t mean some of these hygienists shouldn’t try harder to improve my experience. And so, here are my New Year’s Resolutions for this crew.

Hygienist resolution #1: Stop making shit up

I’ve fielded various complaints from hygienists over the years. Here are some examples: 

•  “You are pressing too hard with the floss and slicing up your gums.”
• “You aren’t getting the backs of your front teeth.”
• “You aren’t getting the back of your 12-year molars.”
•  “You’re brushing too hard and causing gum recession.”
• “You grind your teeth at night. Soon you’ll have no enamel left.”

For years I took these criticisms to heart and tried to do better—but how can I, when my dental hygiene is already world class? Finally I decided to ignore these comments altogether, for the simple reason that there is no consistency to them. No two hygienists have offered up the same criticism, and no single hygienist has offered up the same criticism on two different occasions. Moreover, I have yet to hear a single one of these complaints from the dentist. All the dentists go on and on about what a great job I’m doing with my teeth; they praise me more vociferously than my own mom. I’m convinced that the hygienists, perhaps frustrated because they couldn’t make my gums bleed no matter how hard they tried, are just making shit up. So, evil hygienists … just stop.

Hygienist resolution #2: Stop making this My Teeth Cleaning With Andre

Why are hygienists so chatty? I guess it gets a bit lonely when you’re only interacting with patients, not colleagues, but why don’t you people understand that I cannot talk when my mouth is stretched wide open and has your hands in it? You ask me these open-ended questions and I don’t know what to do. Due to the crowding from your fingers and your instruments, my tongue cannot reach my teeth, my alveolar ridge, or my hard palate, so basically all I can do is grunt. If you’ve wondered why my description of my holiday plans is so terse and unhelpful, that is why.

Where things get especially frustrating is when you take unfair advantage of my situation to criticize me, secure in the knowledge that I can’t really defend myself. So when you say, “Oh, I see you’re a mouth breather—but then, you knew that,” you shouldn’t take my “Huh” for any kind of agreement. It’s just that I can’t be bothered to twist my head away to disengage from your fingers so I can say, “Look, if I mouth-breathed in my sleep, my wife would surely call me on it. If the bit of gum between my front teeth seems a little raw, it’s because I exercise in the cold morning air, a practice that I refuse to give up just to avoid the minimal damage it may cause to my gums.”

Hygienist resolution #3: Keep your monologue anodyne

Many hygienists I’ve encountered are quite happy with my minimal contributions to our conversation because all they really want is to talk. Perhaps that’s why they chose this line of work. I’m fine with this, so long as their chatter is low-key and uncontroversial. Ideally, I’d like to be able to sleep through it, since it’s so rare to be leaning back in a chair like this with my head supported and nothing required of me. So, hygienists: please don’t upset me with diatribes about, say, the sorry state of public education, or worse, anything personal.

One hygienist started off by asking my why my arm was in a sling (for this I had to twist my head away long enough to say, “Bike accident”), and then she moved on to how dangerous bicycles are and how irresponsible it is to ride one on city streets, and then—I am not making this up—she went off on a tirade about how hard it is teaching her teenaged daughter how to drive, because the girl just won’t listen. She lamented, “I told my daughter to take the highway on-ramp and she flat refused, she was like, ‘Mom, I don’t feel comfortable,’ and I had to yell at her and say, ‘Just do it!’ and so finally she did.” I was very disturbed by this: not only was this person a total psycho, but she was having some kind of freak-out, while holding a very sharp pointy object millimeters away from the softest parts of my mouth.

Hygienist resolution #4: Enough with the face shield!

When did dental hygienists start using the clear plastic face shield? This device is ridiculous. Okay, I get it, you don’t want to catch cold from a patient, but let’s think about this. You’ve got a device stick in my mouth continuously sucking every drop of moisture out of it, and I’m not talking anyway. Before these face shields, I uncomplainingly tolerated the risk of dental hygienists’ spittle landing in my mouth (assisted by gravity, no less), but you can’t seem to handle the reduced risk of my spittle reaching you and making its way past your paper surgical mask. Meanwhile your face shield makes you look just a little bit like the riot police.

Think about it. Flight attendants, despite being bombarded with cosmic radiation, don’t wear unsightly lead vests and trousers. They know the risks of their profession, and they accept them. Politicians work giant crowds, shaking hundreds of hands a day, and they’re not wearing single-use rubber gloves. For most of the history of dental offices, hygienists accepted the risk of germs—why can’t you?

Hygienist resolution #5: Stop being so stingy with the water!

Back in the glory days, there was a little sink next to the chair, and the patient got a little paper cup of water, and could rinse all that powdery residue out of his or her mouth after the teeth cleaning. If he or she wanted another cupful, he or she could just ask for it. Maybe that got too expensive, or dental offices are trying to conserve water or cups, because now that sink is gone. I grant that this isn’t the hygienist’s fault. But why give me just one little squirt of water from your little nozzle? Are you that concerned about saving water, or is this some little power trip? Why not hand the nozzle to me and let me help myself?

While you’re at it, how about giving me, say, a full five seconds to swish that water around in my mouth before thrusting the suction back in my mouth and taking all the water back? You give me like a second and it’s not nearly enough time. What, are you in a rush? Where was this sense of urgency when you kept pausing during the tooth-scraping because you got so into your monologue?

From now on, maybe I’ll bring my own water bottle to my appointments. In fact, I’m making that my New Year’s Resolution.

Related reading 

• New Year’s Resolutions
• One-Size-Fits-All New Year’s Resolution

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Self-Help & the 8th Habit

Introduction

Don’t you hate it when this happens?

It’s always so tempting to mock the word “paradigm,” and other concepts from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  (I mentioned this book to my brother and he said, “Let me guess … these habits include yachting, fine dining, and fox hunting.”)  And if more people knew the subtitle of the 7 Habits book, Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, they’d probably make fun of that, too.  In general, the entire self-help industry has been a giant target for all kinds of sarcastic vitriol.

For example, George Carlin is very funny on this topic.  He asks, “Why do so many people need help?  Life is not that complicated….  I really don’t understand:  if you’re lookin’ for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else?  That’s not self-help … that’s help!  There’s no such thing as self-help!  You did it yourself … you didn’t need help!”

As much as I enjoyed that riff, I can’t embrace his distaste for self-help.  I myself have no use for glib aphorisms, much traditional advice (like the importance of goals), and frankly most of the books in the self-help section.  However, I’m a big believer in self-help as an endeavor, and actually respect The 7 Habits.  In fact, in this post I’m going to give you an 8th habit—an all-important one that I think Stephen R. Covey missed.

The self-help paradox

Some of the abuse that The 7 Habits gets is based on clichés like “paradigm” and “win-win.”  The comic strip “Dilbert” has been mining that stuff for so long, “Dilbert” itself can get repetitive.  (In Covey’s defense, “paradigm” and “win-win” weren’t hackneyed when he first trotted them out, and it’s only due to the massive success of his book that they’ve been overused ad nauseam.)  But I think there’s something else people are bothered by; after all, many other self-help books, such as Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, avoid the problem of trite language.  I think a lot of people instinctively recoil from the very idea of self-help.  (I know I did, when I was younger and cockier.)

Why should this be?  Well, many forms of self-help are aimed at people with drug, alcohol, or other addictions … not exactly the kind of person we hold up as a role model.  Beyond that, I think there’s a tendency to equate self-help with weakness, and whiny-ness, and perhaps with excessive humility.  Maybe showcasing the awareness of your own frailty can come across as emo.  If you meet a stranger at a cocktail party who within 30 seconds is mentioning his or her therapist, you might start looking for an excuse to disengage.

But if you look at self-help as commitment to improving yourself (and one that can be as private as you wish), and if you acknowledge that there’s a distinction to be made between good, sound advice in book form and all the chaff that any industry will naturally accumulate, I don’t think there’s any reason to automatically eschew the entire notion of trying to be a better person.  The alternative, when you think about it, is to think of yourself, “I’m just fine the way I am.” 

To me, that’s a pathetic way to be, and actually strikes me as more conducive to being emo.  When I witness emo behavior, I see it as an overblown, melodramatic indulgence and I want to shout, “Aw, just shut up!  I know you’re feeling all sad and vulnerable, but don’t wallow in it—work on it!  You could start by growing a pair!”  (Am I sexist?  Perhaps not—after all, I didn’t say “when I witness emo behavior in a male.”  I think “grow a pair” has, like “guy,” become almost a gender-neutral term.)

Frankly, I think the biggest problem with The 7 Habits is simply that not enough people actually read the book.  More broadly speaking, I think too many people—for reasons of pride, or insecurity, or laziness, or some combination of these—are unwilling to challenge their personal status quo.

So here’s my 8th habit:  get help.  Or to be more specific, don’t get too comfortable.  Concede that you’re not perfect, and work on yourself—and don’t pretend that your natural instincts about this process are any match for the careful, thorough thinking that very good minds have already done.  After all, if you knew how to be the perfect you, you’d be perfect.  And you’re not.  (Nobody is, except perhaps Atul Gawande.)

An example

I’m a cheap bastard.  When my daughter’s Stumpjumper (a great bike, but ~15 years old) wasn’t shifting right, I was determined to fix the shifter instead of replacing it.

I tried the easy route recommended by my mechanic pals (hosing the shifter’s innards down with WD-40), but that didn’t work.  This thing was completely gummed up.  So I took it apart.  Damn, that thing’s complicated.  There are all these washers and bushings and pawls, and it’s got 3 springs, one of which you have to wind up and hold tension on while you bolt the shifter back together.  I took photos as I went, but I wasn’t methodical enough, and missed important information, and wasted vast amounts of time in vain.  Throughout the ordeal there was this voice in my head:  “You’re an idiot!” and “Your brothers are right, you’re not mechanically minded!” and “You suck!” and “You call yourself a bike mechanic?” and “Like an idiot, you bought your kid an ancient bike you can’t get parts for and now you’re screwed!” and so forth.

I took a break from the shifter repair to closely examine these strong feelings I was having, and question whether there’s something wrong with me that I can’t take little failures like this in stride.  In the big scheme of things, a new shifter wouldn’t actually be that expensive.  Any third party would probably having trouble understanding why this meant so much to me—and maybe for good reason!  What if I’m being totally unreasonable, I wondered, and some deep fracture in my ego is starting to show itself?  These are all worthy ideas to investigate, and it’s a worthy thing to have the bravery to confront yourself and entertain such doubts.

So did I look online for a good therapist who could sort out my feelings of self-loathing?  No, in the final analysis I determined that that wasn’t the kind of self-help I needed.  I just needed a good website with some better photos of the shifter.  And man, I found an awesome site!  Click here:  this guy not only posted 17 great photos of the left shifter alone, he annotated them and provided complete instructions!

Frankly, I was plenty daunted by the website, because it gave me even less excuse to chuck the shifter and buy a replacement.  But more than that, this guy’s success, and his generosity in putting up the instructions and photos, inspired me.  He obviously has great patience, and a more methodological approach, and I thought, “Why can’t I be more like him?”  So I gave it another crack, and it really did end up being a self-help project (i.e., requiring my own effort and insight) because I couldn’t just follow the guy’s directions … I needed to conceptualize the pieces in 3-D, and try out various ways of putting them together (since I’d buggered the thing up to the point that some were installed wrong).  In case you’re interested, here’s my own set of photos:

(That last photo is a still from a movie I made, which was instrumental because even when I had the shifter assembled correctly, I still had to reach through a gap in the housing with a screwdriver and click the internal pieces back and forth, to work in the oil, before the lever finally started working—which it totally does now, like a champ!).

My point is this:  at the core of self-help is a refusal to let yourself off the hook too easily.  Sure, there is good advice out there about being compassionate with yourself, and the self-loathing voices that countless people have in their heads are not often very constructive.  But for every person who pushes himself too hard and needs to lighten up, I’d say there are 10 who are just too complacent to push their comfort zone, or too reluctant to get help on something they can’t handle on their own.

Giving up too easily can lead to serious consequences; standing down and accepting defeat is no good for the soul.  When I got that shifter working again, I just sat there for a spell, clicking away, putting it through its paces, as delighted as Eeyore savoring his birthday presents:  putting his (popped) balloon from Piglet into the (empty) honey pot Pooh gave him and taking it back out again.

Without getting help (and inspiration) from this complete stranger on the Internet, I’d have failed to fix the shifter, and that self-annihilating voice might well have taken to reasserting itself every time I looked at the mismatched replacement shifter on my kid’s bike.  Instead, the repaired shifter is now an emblem of my perseverance.  (Is it okay that I berated myself so much during the process?  Yeah, probably.  I’m a loud person from a loud family  so my internal voice is bound to be loud as well.  I think my self-esteem is fine.  Sometimes my stubbornness plays a little rough, that’s all.)

One more point to be made here is that not all self-help resources are touchy-feely.  A how-to guide, or the shifter repair instructions on a website, are still self-help.  Why are so many people perfectly casual about instruction manuals and how-to guides but suddenly get nervous when the book is about fixing yourself instead of some object?  A self-help book is either good or it isn’t … there’s no shame in giving it a go, even if (or perhaps especially if) the process might subject you to uncomfortable self-examination.

The cynical justification for the 8th habit

Okay, maybe you’ve been gagging on my whole essay here because you’re just too cynical to go in for this idealistic self-help business and my saccharine success story.  That’s fine—but you should still embrace my 8th habit—get help—for one purely pragmatic reason:  chances are very good your boss will appreciate it.

Who is it, after all, in the “Dilbert” strip who’s always spouting stuff about “win-win” and “paradigms”?  It’s the bosses!  Who are the people, in the real world, who have used these terms so much, and for so long, that they’ve become clichés?  The executives! 

Now, there are various ways to account for this.  One way is to say that executives just have a weakness for this stuff and those who spout banal platitudes and ideological sound-bites are bound to flock together.  But another possible explanation is that a willingness to embrace the self-help ethos is what actually helped propel these people to power.  I don’t think it matters which of these you believe, because the bottom line is, management does respect the self-help impulse.  (Over a dozen C-level executives are quoted in the “Praise for…” section of The 7 Habits.)

When you think about this, it makes perfect sense.  Any healthy corporation needs to foster a culture of earnestness, while rooting out cynicism (which can hugely erode employee morale).  I don’t think you can ever go wrong, career-wise, by erring on the side of humility.

So am I saying you should leave The 7 Habits on your desk for your boss to see, and/or gush to him or her about this or that self-help book?  Not at all.  This essay being the exception, I’m generally pretty quiet about my own self-improvement projects.  Moreover, there’s no telling what your particular boss might think of this or that self-help resource.  But if you suppress your cynicism, and acknowledge the reality that earnestness isn’t the 8th deadly sin, and at the very minimum resist the temptation to pooh-pooh the various professional development programs and rah-rah sales kickoff meetings or whatever, your attitude is bound to evolve, and this will be noticed.  Humility is a habit that very few people, I think, would hold against you.

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New Year’s Resolutions

Introduction

While much of America is taking part in the age-old tradition of new year’s resolutions right now, I’m following my own tradition of pondering the matter without actually coming to any conclusions or committing to anything. This post documents that struggle.

Getting started

Part of my issue is that the most obvious resolutions aren’t available to me. Googling top-ten lists of resolutions, I see the same things every time: lose weight, quit smoking, exercise more, drink less alcohol, get out of debt, spend time with family. This low-lying fruit is beyond my reach. My body-mass index is spang in the middle of normal; I exercise like crazy; I’ve never smoked; medical studies suggest I should perhaps drink more alcohol than I do; and so forth.

You might assume that I therefore think I’m just fine as-is. Actually, I don't; rather, my shortcomings simply aren’t the garden-variety ones. While other people are clear and resolute in their desire for self-improvement, I’m just stagnating here, for lack of imagination. Surely there are ways for everybody to improve. So on New Year’s Day I asked my brother Max—an accomplished practitioner of nonstandard thinking—if he had any new year’s resolutions. To my delight, he’d written out a hundred of them the night before, which he read to me over the phone. Here are some highlights:

1. eat right

2. weekly haircut

3. lose 36 pounds by March

10. love 6 things I hate

12. talk to people by creek

24. no more classic rock people

37. Boston kreme doughnut

38. work on golf swing

77. lower temperature for larger roast, and increase cooking time

92. if I get a bloody nose, put a cold towel on the back of my neck and tilt my head back

Several of these, particularly #38, tripped my irony detector. Max has never played golf in his life, and isn’t about to start. I had to ask about #25, “cut off arm.” I said, “Wait … cut off arm?” Max replied, in a tone of pure resignation, “Yeah….” My favorite item on his list was #93, “We don’t want any replays of what happened last year.” He delivered this in the same scolding-woman tone as he used for his follow-up comment: “As long as we’re changing the calendar we might as well make some other changes.” (I know what you’re thinking: he should be the blogger of the family. I agree! Here’s a picture, by the way, of the two of us.)

Good intentions

New year’s resolutions remind me of perennial magazine articles like “Ten easy steps to improving your fitness!” and “Five anti-ageing secrets!” If these easy techniques really worked, they’d have long ago become mainstream and the articles wouldn’t have to be recycled continually. Unsurprisingly, when I looked at online lists of the top ten new year’s resolutions over the last few years, they were all the same.

I got a fortune cookie fortune once that said, “Hell is paved with good intentions.” Not the road to hell, as the saying goes, but Hell itself. I love the image of a flaming underground chamber with the standard rivers of fire and everything, but dotted here and there with exercise bikes, Soloflex machines, and crock pots. Every so often amidst the fire pits you’d see an abandoned home-improvement project. Everyone down there would be a grad student still working on his thesis.

My inner conflict

I can’t help but reflect that the people who have the easiest time coming up with new year’s resolutions are the ones who have allowed their obvious failings to persist and accumulate unmitigated all year long, like dust bunnies under the bed. I mean, if you’re doing something you know you shouldn’t, or are failing to do something you know you should, why ignore it until this arbitrary January timeframe? Why wait to correct your behavior? Why shouldn’t the self-improvement process run all year?

At the same time, I think the earnest, all-together-now spirit of these resolutions is kind of sweet. I went to BoozeMo recently, and couldn’t believe how empty the parking lot once. Normally it’s packed. It was like a ghost town in there, and every single thing I bought was on sale. The cashier said it’s the same every year: slammed on New Year’s Eve and dead after. Similarly, my brother commented on how crowded the gym gets during January. It’s a special time of year when most of the nation unites in a group self-improvement project.

My goodwill toward new year’s resolutionists heightens my own anxiety about not knowing what, in myself, to address. It would be dangerous to decide I’m satisfied. Whatever little satisfactions we have in life would probably end up being sources of actual guilt if we just stepped back and saw the bigger picture. The happy consumer, thrilled with that new iPad, would probably be shocked to know how truly insufferable he or she really is, seen from the eyes of the person on the receiving end of an unsolicited demo. The person who gets great satisfaction from recycling a huge passel of plastic bottles is missing the point—that he or she should be drinking tap water to begin with. Doubtless there are a great many ways in which I could be improving; I just lack the vision to come up with them. Why is it so much easier to come with ways for other people to improve?

My resolution candidates

Having scoured my brain, I’ve come up with some candidates for new year’s resolutions:

1. Be more insightful into my own shortcomings

2. Save money

3. Take a class

4. Eat more pizza and taqueria fare

5. Read more to Lindsay

6. Help others

7. Be less messy

8. Reduce stress / Enjoy life more

9. I will not lose … ever

10. Keep journal about kids

The first item suggests itself to me right away, just as a New Year’s Day hangover suggests “drink less” as a resolution for so many. But I’m not sure “be more insightful” would go the distance as a resolution; it might actually make things worse by leading me into self-absorption or the kind of self-flagellation that would interfere with resolution #8. I’m going to let those two kind of cancel each other out. That’s okay, I still have eight left.

Saving money isn’t a resolution I feel I can truly commit to. First off, I’m not exactly a rabid consumer to begin with. (I almost made a resolution to buy some new socks—I’ve been wearing the same eight pairs of brown socks for the last five or six years—but I felt it too trivial.) Meanwhile, servicing my Bay Area mortgage makes a money-hoarding goal kind of laughable. And then there’s the matter of another resolution I considered, which was to do my part to save our nation’s economy. Finally, saving money conflicts with item #4, eating out (which, meanwhile, clashes with another near-candidate, “spend more time with family,” because my wife hates pizza and my daughter Lindsay dislikes restaurants). I’m going to scratch this one.

Take a class … this could cause stress, but might help me enjoy life more. I’m going to keep it.

Reading more to Lindsay is actually problematic. I enjoy it, and she enjoys it, but I might actually be interfering with her education. She’s just learning how to read, and can handle the simpler Dr. Seuss books and the like. But intellectually she’s much more interested in books like Black Beauty and Clarice Bean Spells Trouble and it’s hard to see how my reading these to her will encourage her to go read basic picture books on her own. This resolution may fail the sustainability test as well—after all, once Lindsay is able to read on her own, my read-aloud tradition will vanish and I’ll have to read to the cat.

Helping others … this I have some experience with. In my high school health class the teacher tasked each student with assigning himself a Health Behavior Change (HBC), and each of us had to report weekly to the teacher on our progress. After I nailed my first HBC, flossing my teeth (a regimen I faithfully continue to this day), I was at loose ends as to my second HBC. I asked the teacher, “Can our HBC be to help a friend with his HBC?” The teacher said, “That’s a great idea. What, do you know someone who’s trying to quit smoking?” I gestured to my friend at the next desk and said, “No, I want to help Sean floss.”

Kidding aside, helping others is really tricky. It takes either money (a conflict with #2) or work (a conflict with #8) and moreover requires, and/or fosters, a certain amount of ego-bloat. Who am I to decide I have what it takes to be somebody’s savior? I once gave a homeless guy some change but he turned out to be a (shabbily-dressed) construction worker on break. He correctly fingered me as a do-gooder college kid and said, “Man, you guys are conditioned.” That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t give change to (suspected) panhandlers; I just have to be more careful. So I’ll do the basic stuff, like giving to charities or guiding a blind Bart passenger to his seat, but I can’t commit to a new better Dana who makes helping others a major life goal. I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is.

Being less messy pertains to how much food I get on my face and clothes when I eat, and to how much I splatter when I pee standing up. There’s much room for improvement here, and I expect that I can actually make some progress. After all, I never used to have to wipe my mouth with a napkin so much, or clean up the toilet seat every time. Either my skills are waning over the years, or I have always been messy and just didn’t realize it until now. So I’ll try to eat more slowly and aim better, but this isn’t destined to be a perfectly satisfying new year’s resolution. I’m still more interested in other bad behaviors I’m ignorant of now but will identify and target in the future.

Item #9, I will not lose … ever, does not refer to an actual goal (after all, I graciously lose all the time), but to my beer-swishing mantra. To properly pour a Belgian-style beer, you gently pour two-thirds into a glass, swish the rest around while reciting your personal mantra, then pour the rest. (A brewery provides these instructions, minus the mantra part. I’m not sure where I got that.) I’ve found through trial and error that “I will not lose … ever” is just the right length for a mantra. So this resolution is about enjoying beer more. I think it holds great promise.

The last resolution, keeping a journal about my kids, fails the new year’s resolution applicability requirements simply because it’s nothing new—I already do this. I just need to be better. You know those baby books, listing height, weight, first words, and so forth? They’re like a poster child for unfulfilled intentions. The harried parents (which would be a good name for a rock band, by the way) usually begin neglecting this project almost instantly, and when the kid comes across the book decades later he’s bound to be disappointed at how little is revealed about his earliest years. So I’m fully on the hook for this resolution.

Conclusion

It looks like in 2011 I’ll be focused on taking a class, aiming better, enjoying my beer more, and writing more in that journal. If I find, three months in, that I’ve mastered each of these projects and am feeling dangerously satisfied about it, I suppose I’ll have to take up smoking, week-long benders, and Boston kreme doughnuts. After all, I have next year to think about.

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