It's Resolution Time, Let's Talk about Making Changes

For the first time in years I’m approaching the end of the year actually wanting to reflect on the year gone by and look forward to the future. I’ve never put much stock in celebrations of calendar changes, whether that’s the new year or my own birthday, though I’m happy to celebrate others birthdays or my own wedding anniversary. But, because some cliches are true, having a kid changed my perspective on this. Coincidentally, this has been a year of major personal change for me, and so I wanted to offer some of my perspective on what works and what doesn’t work if you want to make changes in your own life. If you’re setting goals or starting out the year with resolutions, perhaps some of these observations or perspectives will be helpful for you. I think these strategies can be applied to any big change you want to make, though they’ll differ in detail. Take what you will and leave the rest. 

So I’ll start with what changed. The bottom line is I needed to get healthier. Something inexplicably changed in the way I take care of myself during the pandemic, and the shift was long-term and unhealthy. The need for change had been simmering for about two years, but finally, in December of last year, I took the first step and I chose to stop drinking alcohol. This was the first critical change of many that I made, but it was the most important. From there I started trying to build up a “flywheel” of self-reinforcing habits that would lead to better personal health, all normal stuff, like exercising more, eating better, and developing better sleeping habits. I’ve had tons of success on all fronts, but the work is ongoing. Here are three of the many lessons I’ve learned in this quest for self-improvement.

You can’t do it all at once

First and foremost, if your list of personal improvement projects is extensive, scrap it, write one thing down, and make sure that one thing is the most important thing you could change today. It is very hard to do multiple things well all at once, and it is even harder to change multiple things you are doing poorly and start doing them well all at once. Pick one very specific, very strict goal and achieve it completely, this gives you the best chance to succeed at everything else. 

For me, my first promise to myself, and personal goal, was to quit using alcohol altogether. Everything could follow from that one thing, but if I didn’t do that the odds of success on anything else were near zero. In practice, for me, that meant that during my first two months of abstaining from booze, I held myself to basically no other standards. While I tried to work out, and occasionally tried to eat better, I did not focus on these goals at all, I focused exclusively on not giving myself any excuses on drinking, and that meant that if I wanted to eat cake because I felt sorry for myself, so be it, as long as I wasn’t having a beer. 

I focused on what a new schedule would look like without as many social nights out. I focused on how my sleep habits changed without drinks. I focused on being a good dad and being a supportive partner while trying to learn where I could fit in other healthy activities. But all of that was ancillary to putting all of my energy into one specific goal and doing that one thing well until it was a habit. I’ve seen various online forums where people say authoritatively that developing a new habit takes 30 days. I think that number should be tripled. I’m almost 13 months out of quitting booze now, and it is no longer a “conscious” decision, it simply is who I am, but it took about three months for it to be completely habitual. I’m certain the same would hold for an exercise schedule, or food prep schedule, so know that you have to set that as your one single goal, and you have to achieve it for at least three months before it feels routine.

Try to do new things instead of “getting back” to an old version of yourself

I shifted towards a fitness focus around February/March of this year. I was about five years removed from being in very good shape, and about twelve years removed from the best shape of my life. Those old versions of myself are very difficult to chase, and if you’ve fallen out of shape and can recall what it felt like when you were most recently in pretty good shape, it can make it pretty hard, mentally, to get back in shape. For the better part of the last fifteen years my fitness regimen has mostly involved CrossFit, powerlifting, spinning, and yoga at varying levels and degrees of focus. I did some CrossFit during the first part of the year when I was exclusively focused on quitting alcohol, but once I pivoted to focus on fitness as a goal, I decided not to pursue any of the activities I prioritized when I was most recently in shape. I started distance running. 

The last time I trained distance running with any degree of seriousness was when I was 18, and the last time I ran a race with any level of seriousness was when I was in my early 20s. I had no recent baseline for distance running success, and was effectively a novice at the activity. It was perfect, I barely knew what it felt like to be an effective runner as an adult, so I had nothing to compare against. All I had was the baseline I started at this year, and I saw nothing but improvement from there. Now I can comfortably run a 10k at the drop of a hat, and I’ve started incorporating other activities back into my routine without the mental drain of being terrible at that activity as compared to a recent version of myself. 

So if you are trying to get in shape, and especially if you have recently been in good shape, try to get in shape by doing something you’ve never done seriously before. Build something completely new rather than trying to rebuild something that you had a few years ago. 

Be unapologetic and have a “why”

If you are going to make serious changes in your life, other aspects of your life involving other people are going to change, and you have to be cool with that. In my case, I was always the guy a friend could call up to grab a beer with at the drop of a hat. That didn’t fully change, I’m still happy to go to a bar for a mocktail or an Athletic NA beer, but I was no longer available to be that friend that would tie one on in celebration or in misery. Good friends and colleagues will understand and support you. The others are not worth your time, but you have to be comfortable letting them go by the wayside. The people you want to keep around are those that are happy you are making positive changes, even if they do not fully understand why you are making changes. You also need your closest friends and family to not only be supportive of the change, but bought in. My partner was clear from the jump on what I was doing and what I wanted to be accountable for, and I could not have done any of it if I didn’t communicate my plans to her or if she wasn’t bought into my plan. 

The only way to be self-assured enough to weather the inevitable interpersonal changes that happen is to have a rock-solid foundational philosophy underpinning your personal goals. “I want to look good naked” is not sufficient motivation. “I want to be healthier” is too fluffy. I decided that I wanted to wake up every morning knowing that my personal decisions had made me the best possible version of myself for my family on that day. Work stress happens, home stress happens, schedule disruptors happen and all of those can make me less than 100% of myself. But as long as I choose to fuel my body appropriately, choose to exercise, and choose to avoid substances that knock my body down, I can be confident that I’ve done everything in my power to be the very best version of me that I can be on that day. This is not “hustle” or “grindset” mentality, it is just my way of claiming control over who I am, and the decisions I make for this vessel that is hauling me around through this life. 

There are two important parts of a foundational philosophy. First, it should not be entirely personal. My philosophy is about service, and how I am able to best support other very important people in my life. Second, it is not metric-oriented. I can measure things that contribute to my ability to show up as my best self every day (stats can be found at the end of this blog), but the idea of being my best self in service of my family is not measurable on its own. It is aspirational, and there is no end to the work.

Towards 2025

This project is far from complete, but I know for certain that 2024 Matt was the very best adult version of me. I’ve become a much more enlightened version of myself. I know my body much better, I know my moods much better, I have a much stronger intrinsic sense of what motivates me and what does not, and I’ve become a much better partner and father. More to come. The work does not stop. 2025 will see me eating more cruciferous greens and squatting heavy. 

This is only a glimpse of what I’ve done, I didn’t even get into my new meditation habits, what I’ve read, professional shifts, etc, but if you are looking to make a change and want more detail on how I approached it, let me know. I’m happy to talk or correspond about it. 

Stats since around December 2, 2023 (the first day I stopped drinking):

RHR: -15
VO2 Max: +11 
Weight: down a lot. I do not use the scale, years of weightlifting taught me that scales lie and body composition is the only reliable measure, but if you measure by the important “clothing that fits me from my wardrobe that I couldn’t wear last year” index, I’d guess I’m down about 30 lbs.
Sleep: drastically improved “sleep scores” (+15 points on average, as measured on a Garmin device) for five months and then leveled off in April, having a kid puts a real cap on the range of potential improvement here.
Food intake: there’s lots of room for improvement here, but I did fine. I’ve transitioned from “mostly bad” food decisions to “a mixed bag”. This is going to be my primary focus to start this year. More fish and (already mentioned) cruciferous veggies in 2025.