I. No Pressure
January is the traditional month for setting goals for a whole year. Calling them New Year’s Resolutions sounds like some governmental committee… “Be it resolved that….” And you all know how such committee based work can miss the heart of the matter. I propose the heart of the matter for artists is developing a way of setting a tone for the coming year that works for you.

Heaven knows, as a coach, I have lots of ideas, concepts, and acronyms* for clarifying where you want your life and art to go over the next twelve months. But how do you do this without setting yourself up, in the best case, for pressure, and in the worst, failure? Perhaps it’s a matter of scale.

One of my favorite fiber art teachers** underlines the need to have the tool fit the scale of the work. (I especially need her advice since I am prone to cutting very small pieces of fabric with my largest scissors because they’re handy.) Well, I’m proposing that setting goals and setting the tone for a whole year are two different scales. They are different not only in function, one being about outcomes and the other about process, but they are also different in scale – goals being tasks that you complete and are done with and the tone being an atmosphere you want to last the whole year.

Let’s take the perennial New Year’s Resolution of “lose 10 pounds”. Even if stated more generally (lose weight), it presumes you know what to do to accomplish it and those steps would be better suited to be your month by month goals. If you set a tone for the whole year it might be make time and space for fitness. Make fitness the North Star to steer by as you make choices throughout the year. Fitness as the year’s mantra, if you will.

How do you set a tone rather than come up with a list of ‘shoulds’ for the new year? I could, for example, set the general tone of completing projects. If I do that, rather than listing all the projects I would hope to complete, I’ve used a large scale tool to guide the year’s choices about starting and finishing projects.

You might try using goals for outcomes that are specific and not longer than a month, but setting a tone for the New Year. Use that tone to make space for the kind of atmosphere, events, and yes, even outcomes, you want to enjoy throughout the year.

*SMART = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based – see Newsletter http://www.dianereardon.com/nlarch1-04.htm
**Jane Dunnewold. www.artclothstudios.com
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
Kegan, Robert & Lahey, Lisa. How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work.  2001.

These corporate coaches have a theory for why New Years’ resolutions mostly don’t work. They’re all for the way New Year’s resolutions emphasize personal responsibility and the part we ourselves have played in our past limitations. But they also point out that the Resolution approach “frames our part as misbehavior or ineffectiveness….the equivalent of naughtiness.” Making resolutions to clean up our act do not go far enough since they also activate competing and mutually exclusive goals.

They walks you through a process of discovering your part in stopping a goal from being met, and then what the payoff has been in terms in some competing goal. For example, if have a goal of finishing projects, first I discover that the payoff for me in not finishing is avoiding the possibility of the results being criticized. Then I discover the competing goal of protecting myself from such criticism. Finally, they lead me through exercises to uncover an unvoiced assumption I’m holding; for example, if I don’t avoid criticism, I’ll ______(fill in the blank…scream, fall apart, quit, make a scene, whatever catastrophe I’m dreading).

They feel the quick-fix ideas behind New Year’s Resolutions tend not to change the larger beliefs and meanings that spawned problems in the first place. They urge that it’s better to solve our problems in ways that change us, ways that are “transformative rather than merely corrective.”
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III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
Hodgkinson, Tom. How to Be Idle. 2006.
In case you need more ideas of how to take the pressure off in the New Year, this

publisher of the periodical, The Idler, has gathered his best ideas into a relaxing stroll through the hours of the day. He stands up for all those politically incorrect pastimes like sleeping in, naps, rambling, drinking, smoking, and rioting. Being British, he also waxes prolific on tea time and the pub, and underlines how Americans work more than any other national group. A perfect antidote if you’ve been tainted by too much pressure for New Year’s resolutions.
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IV. Creative Links
www.idler.co.uk   This is the place to subscribe to The Idler magazine, whose most recent issue is “How to Save the World without Really Trying.” There’s also a lot of free online material here such as a proposal for National Unawareness Day and full texts of interviews with many creative, offbeat folk.
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V. Newsletter Info
E-mail changes. To change your e-mail address, subscribe, or unsubscribe please e-mail connect@dianereardon.com. If you use a spam filter, please add this e-mail address to your list of approved senders. This material is included on the breakTHROUGH Creativity Coaching (website www.dianereardon.com) All material is copyrighted ©, 31 December 2006, Diane Reardon. All rights reserved. Visit the website for back issues and details on scheduling a complimentary one-hour coaching session.
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