life
‘NEW YEAR, NEW ME’
How to actualise change… today, not tomorrow! BY JEREMY GOMEZ
‘N
ew Year, New Me’ has been a recurring slogan for each new year for this last decade, but it is a strange sentiment that we feel that the opening of a new year will allow us some new freedom or power to change ourselves. Why are we waiting for the new year and why not any time in March or October? Is it that we feel that there’s a certain magic about the day? I think this arbitrary designation of a special day for monumental change could be described as Cinderella syndrome; a great change to ourselves and our circumstances once the clock strikes twelve. For the sake of honesty, I must admit that I’m a sucker for the Cinderella magic of December the 31st, but for all the magic in the world, I don’t think it’s really working. In recent years there has a been a large amount of content in books, academic journals and other media noting the importance of habits; smaller, regular actions that contribute to a large change. This has been shown 38
to actualise a real and more enduring change than our fairy godmother or her more modern counterpart, sheer force of will. They suggest a toolkit of ideas with a touch of neuroscience, a dash of behavioural economics, and a heap of ancient philosophy. The rules for these tools are that they must be achievable,
they must be actionable in the here and now, and they must be clear and measurable. With the toolkit and these rules, it is likelier that through the smaller steps of regular habits, we can reach more of our goals. Let us begin by taking a look inside the toolkit and it’s a toolkit because you might find that some of these work for GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE JANUARY 2020