A New Kind of Goal This Year: One Degree Shifts

The lede:

We often bite off much more than we can chew when it comes to our New Year’s resolutions.
It’s important to commit ourselves to small, one-degree shifts through time, effort, and intentional discipline.
The quality of your process will determine the success of your results.

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“Happy New Year!”

Here we are, clinking our glasses with friends and family ushering in yet another year.

Our hearts are filled with a cocktail of slight skepticism stirred with a shot of hesitant optimism as we brace ourselves for 2022. While the past two years have brought about a myriad of unprecedented events that have changed quite literally every aspect of our lives, one constant remains:

New Year’s Resolutions.

Love them or hate them, the reality is New Year’s Resolutions aren’t going anywhere. Because it’s a new year, doesn’t it make sense to start fresh and reinvent ourselves? Many of us do and shortly after we’re met with disappointment and frustration. We set lofty goals and break them shortly afterward. This is such a consistent pattern that these resolutions have become somewhat of a joke. It’s estimated that nearly 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail. Despite the enormous failure rate, the business of resolution setting is as booming as ever.

We often bite off more than we can chew, our appetites can easily get manipulated by the appeal of the deliciously plated result. We treat resolution setting like ordering off a drive-thru menu: “one large life change and one small side of effort. Please and thank you.”

If only it were that simple. If we are truly committed to real change in our personal lives and our workplaces we can’t simply order off a fast-food menu- but rather we must commit ourselves to the process. The feast of New Year’s resolutions takes time, effort, and intentional discipline.

The process isn’t sexy or glamourous- but rather, it’s a series of practical one-degree shifts.

What if we approached these goals more like preparing a meal and less like a fast-food order? To cook you must plan the meal, inventory supplies, buy ingredients, follow a recipe, and commit yourself to some time in the kitchen. A good meal is a series of small- seemingly insignificant one-degree steps to produce a tasty outcome. Each ingredient significantly shifts the result. We can all agree that even a pinch of salt greatly alters an entire dish.

Perhaps our one-degree shifts are ingredients like salt.

A common New Year’s order is to “lose weight” or “be healthier”. Great, this isn’t an inherently bad goal, however, it often lacks specifics or any sustainable direction. Most people end up paying for a gym membership that they eventually cancel because the only gains its racking up are negatives in their bank account.

Perhaps a one-degree shift looks like something as small as adding two creamers in your coffee instead of three. Or going on a walk once a week instead of running a mile every day. Over time these simple ingredients contribute to the finished recipe of your intended result.

One-degree ingredients do more than just lose weight, they transform the menu of who you are- not just what you eat. The quality of the process will determine the success of the results. British food author Mary Berry put it this way, “Baking is very rewarding, and if you follow a good recipe, you will get success.”

This year let’s focus on the quality of our New Year’s recipes. Raise your glasses to more one-degree shifts.

Cheers to 2022!

Questions to ponder: