TODAY IS THE DAY WHEN MANY PEOPLE begin their New Year with a hearty effort to change their behavior. They have made initial preparations for a new life, one free of cigarettes, fast food, and laziness.
I once heard a speaker talk about the way in which we deal with change. He called it the “New Binder Theory.” It’s like when we were kids and each year we’d get a new three ring binder, fill it with clean lined paper, and have one of those plastic pencil holders that clip in. The outside would be a clean slate of denim, ready to be marked up, and made our own.
It held all the promise and hope of a new school year. The year to get straight A’s, perfect attendance and make varsity. Rarely did most of us achieve our lofty goals.
Two weeks into the school year, the malaise would set in, the binder would no longer be quite as sparkly and fresh. The pages inside would be filled with the scribblings and babblings of a bored student, the lofty goals having been slowly forgotten. As they fade into the background, the binder would lose its luster.
The pattern of furious interest in a subject, followed by a period of boredom, and eventually a wholesale forgetting of the original goal, is a common experience for all of us. It is part of the human condition.
Some of us will decide that today is the day to give up cigarettes, others are determined to lose that last 25 pounds, or that 180 pounds of useless fat called a spouse, others are going to set themselves up financially. To achieve these lofty goals requires consistent effort, whether it is changing the way in which we eat, being ready to move past the emotional barriers posed by thoughts of a divorce, or the willpower to change our buying habits.
The problems we face, whether personally or socially, require us to make a consistent effort, over a significant period of time, to achieve a new goal. In order to do that, we must keep the goal in focus over time.
It’s not easy. I know, because last year I decided that I was going to lose 50 pounds. I changed my diet, my exercise routine (okay, okay, I GOT an exercise routine!), hired a personal trainer and took up swimming. I gave up my favorite quick indulgence of two fast food hamburgers and a milkshake, in exchange I began eating vegetables and hummus.
I turned myself in to Weight Watchers to learn new ways of dealing with food. I looked at why I ate the way I did, and when I ate, or overate. I dealt with the emotional eating, mostly.
It paid off. Over the course of three months I lost 25 pounds, and as I began to get some muscle definition I realized that I liked the attention I was getting. The positive attention kept me motivated.
But it wasn’t easy. The want of a quick fix is a strong pull, whether it is for a cheeseburger for me, or cutting down all the trees on Second and Fourth streets for the city. We like to have quick and easy solutions, based on our grand schemes.
They don’t work. The only way we achieve our goals is to stick to them, daily, by keeping our focus on the goal. For me, I’ve got another 25 pounds to go, and thankfully, this holiday season didn’t do too much damage, and I’m still down most of the 25 I lost last year.
As for the city, we still have the Second and Fourth street trees, but we also still have some long term problems to be dealt with in terms of sick and sickly trees, like the ones on Pico Those need some love. Can anyone say water and fertilizer?
We have graffiti problems, mostly due to teenagers who have too much time on their hands. We either need to keep them busy with school activities or round them all up and make them mow lawns.
We have goals as a city: We want to house the homeless, we want to reduce the traffic which causes congestion, we want better after school programs and more of them. We want more parks and green spaces. We want to reduce waste and increase recycling.
All of these are goals that are worthy of a world class city. All of them are doable. We just have to keep our focus tight on the goals and not get distracted with issues that aren’t issues.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 1, 2008. Read the original PDF.