What you get often depends on how you start
 

The start of a new year is the traditional time to make resolutions and determine to do better than in the year just past. Generally, resolutions are about action: deciding to do something different, like stop smoking, lose weight or take more exercise. But, while these are all laudable aims, they usually have far less impact than we imagine they will—even if they last beyond the first few weeks.

If you truly want to make a significant change in your life, it might be better to ignore specific actions for the time being and look instead towards changing your underlying attitude to life. The world and the events it brings are always what they are—no amount of wishing on our part will change that—but the impact each has on our own life is determined in great part by the attitude we bring and the way we choose to respond.

In a year that contain both an implicit promise of change as new administration takes charge in the US, and probably more threats than any year for many decades, it seems to me to be especially important to enter the months ahead carefully and with full attention to what we are bringing with us. Many people are so weighed down by the baggage of the past that they run the danger of turning future events into repetitions of whatever hurts and disappointments they are carrying with them.

Attitudes that are active, but negative

It’s simplistic to dismiss these as useless or avoidable. Many people quite reasonably feel anger because they have been hurt. They want to retaliate against those who have brought them this misery, especially when it appears that they did it entirely in pursuit of their own personal gain. Who would not feel that the greedy financiers and executives, who grew fat on encouraging others to take on endless debt, should now suffer for their selfishness? Revenge does indeed feel sweet at times.

The problem with attitudes of this kind is not that they are wrong, but that they often bring only short-term gain. Once you have taken your revenge, what then? You’re really no further forward. Anger may spur you into action, but it too wanes over time. Keeping up that anger is probably more exhausting that it will be worth. While there are endless topics in this imperfect world of ours that can, and probably should, produce anger, many of them are far beyond our ability to affect.

To be continually angry is to be continually disappointed, as well as stressed, unhappy and focused on everything bad around you: hardly a state of mind that should recommend itself as the best way to approach whatever the new year brings.

Passive and negative

If you find anyone whose attitudes lie here, they truly deserve your compassion. The rising number of people tempted so far into depression and despair that suicide seems preferable is a sad reflection of much that is wrong with the way we run our world. This quadrant breeds alienation. It’s the outlook that, combined with the idealism of youth, is exploited by evil people to train up terrorists and suicide bombers.

Yet mere condemnation by the rest of us is a pathetic response to a serious problem. When you feel that nothing you can do will change anything for the better, despair seems the only logical position. Cynicism may be the least dangerous and most socially acceptable face of this mode of thinking, but it too is based on an underlying belief that no change is possible.

To be in this quadrant for more than a very brief period is highly dangerous, both to the individual and those around him or her. Often the only way out is through professional help. If you know or suspect that someone you know is entertaining this type of attitude, it would be kindest to seek help for them. If you are tempted to reside here, you also need help to get out as quickly as you can—especially since the over-emphasis on winning in recent decades tends to make seeking help difficult in most work-based contexts. Forget your pride. Forget what others may think of you. Holding attitudes in this quadrant is a life-threatening condition.

As an aside, but a relevant one, there are other types of suicide than physical death. I have encountered people who chose to ‘kill’ their career prospects and potential for work satisfaction in a fit of despair at a bullying boss or a cruel organizational culture. I would also count that as a type of murder, to be laid at the door of those who bring it about.

Positive, but passive

Oddly, I think this is becoming almost the most prevalent attitude to the future today. It’s a mixture of expectation, hope and a wish to find someone—some kind of savior, religious or secular—who will solve all our problems for us. It’s positive, in that it views the future as at least hopeful; but it’s passive too, because it places the whole responsibility for change onto someone else.

There are times when I feel sorry for the incoming US president. He is carrying the expectations of so many people, many of them quite unrealistic. What will happen when reality asserts itself and disappointment follows, I cannot say; but relying on hope in anyone other than yourself is a risky approach. While you may hope they can save you, the likelihood of a positive outcome is much reduced by your passivity. In the end, no one is as interested in your personal well-being as you are. If you cannot bestir yourself to do anything to improve your situation, why should they? Faith is usually praised, especially by those who are conventionally religious. Yet faith alone is also close to despair. Neither assumes you can do anything to help yourself.

Positive and active

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is the only attitude that can be useful, I need to point out that it is rarely, if ever, easy to maintain for an extended time. To be purposeful and determined is to ensure that you will constantly meet disappointment and failure. Courage is more than facing down fears. To be truly courageous is to hold to a difficult balance between over-confidence and being over-fearful. It is to acknowledge ever fear fully, not ignore them. It also requires acknowledging that it is fatefully easy to rush into risky action is a fine frenzy of heroics, only to ensure your own failure as a result.

If you choose to face the future with a positive cast of mind and a willingness to take action to improve it—as I hope you will—the essentials you will need include courage, realism and the willingness to remain fully conscious of what is happening, good or bad. At the start of this new year, there is no sense in taking a Pollyanna approach and ignoring all the problems we face. That won’t produce anything but disappointment. Instead, let’s accept that we are surrounded by threats, that the chances of success are limited, and that there are going to be tough and unpleasant times ahead—then walk into the future determined to do our best, whatever the result.

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