Kicking Off 2024: It’s Not Too Late
I had high hopes for a quick start to 2024. I had plans. I was rested. The craziness in my life was only at a ‘7.’
As my family prepared to head out for a First Day Hike, I began admitting that I wasn’t feeling great. My throat was sore. I felt a little achy. My morning coffee just wasn’t doing the trick.
I stumbled through our three-mile trek, came home, and collapsed in bed for the better part of the next three days. The flu had thwarted my grand aspirations for a strong start to 2024.
So, here I am, on January 4th, making a restart.
This time, I am going to succeed. As we wrote about in Thriving and last week, resolutions work. But there’s nothing magical about January 1st. The important thing is to make a commitment and to keep trying. Adversity—the flu, family troubles, all the messy, unpredictable things that happen in life—they are going to happen. Being resolute about a resolution does not mean avoiding failure. It means returning to that resolution as soon as you can after navigating that adversity.
Take sleep, for example. We all know most of us should get 7-9 hours of sleep per night. My body needs 8-hours as much as I would love to need only 7 (or 6!). With the business of the holidays, especially the weeks leading up, I went to bed later than usual and still woke up at my typical early hour. I was failing at sleep. While I got back on track after Christmas, my flu-ridden stretch of over 12 hours of sleep per day probably doesn’t make up for what happened earlier. Hopefully, I will get back on track now.
Meanwhile, sleep continues to be shown to be important. An article published yesterday in the journal Neurology showed that people who had more fragmented sleep had more than double the risk of cognitive impairment 11 years later. These were not older individuals. The sleep measurements were done around the age of 40, and the cognitive impairment was detected around the age of 51. Sleep matters throughout our lives. We can’t cheat sleep when we are younger.
Another tidbit from this study that affected my thinking was how the individuals rated the quality or quantity of their sleep was not associated with later cognitive impairment. Only the objective, external measurement of movement during sleep predicted cognitive impairment. We may not know we are sleeping poorly—but our bed partner might.
As someone whose wife once said I had the ‘Jimmy Legs,’ this makes me worry. Back in my 30s, when life was more chaotic with working night shifts and less attention to sleep hygiene, I was a much worse sleeper. I was evaluated by a sleep specialist and was not diagnosed with a specific disorder. I tried to better manage my sleep, including regular exercise, changing what I ate and drank in the evening, and working a more regular schedule. It has helped. Hopefully, I have avoided cognitive impairment because of making resolutions for better sleep.
Two recent articles helped me think about what helps us be most successful at keeping resolutions. In this study, the researchers had two interesting findings. First, people who made ‘approach-oriented’ resolutions were more successful than people who made ‘avoidance-oriented’ resolutions. A resolution like ‘more vegetables January’ might be more successful than ‘no meat January’. ‘Go to bed by 10’ should have more success than ‘don’t stay up late.’ There’s probably a similar way to frame Dry January, but it’s not leaping to mind.
The other finding from this article is that people succeed more with support. Many studies have shown that people are more likely to be successful with behavior changes when a significant other is also making that same change. Now that I think about it, maybe my family should make a collective resolution. Fortunately, it’s not too late.
The other recent article about resolutions looked at what predicted success at keeping exercise-related resolutions. The only predictive factor for maintaining a resolution was internal motivation, meaning having some personal reason for wanting to keep the resolution. We need to prioritize whatever resolution we make.
This article also looked at what was associated with better well-being, which may be more important than keeping a resolution. Here, the authors found tenacity and what they called goal flexibility as important. I would call this resoluteness and grace. Our well-being depends on us working to improve ourselves and being patient with ourselves when we fail.
A few days late and right on time, I wish you a prosperous new year. For me, my new year starts today; I have failed, and I will succeed. One of my resolutions for 2024 is to write more, so hopefully, you will have more to read in this space as I also work on some bigger projects. I always aspire to live what I write about and hope that, for you and me, 2024 prospers in ways both sought-after and unexpected. Let’s get to it, today and tomorrow.
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This writing may not be used for generative artificial intelligence without express written consent of the author. Image created by the author using Midjourney.
