Warmer or Colder?

Does anyone remember playing a game as a kid where your friend hid something and you had to walk around the room trying to find it by relying only on their clues of whether you were getting “warmer” or “colder”? If you strayed way too far in the wrong direction your hints would change from “colder” to, “ice cold ice cold!” and of course conversely if you were really close your friend would be bouncing up and down cheering, “really hot!”, “burning hot!” This game came to my mind when I was pondering about some New Year’s intensions. 

One of the reasons that resolutions or goals are hard to stick to is that by definition, they are pretty rigid and concrete. In fact, the SMART goals acronym stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time sensitive. While this process helps a lot of people stick to their guns, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for the uncertainties of life. Using this formula, we’ve gotta hit a specific target by a specific time. If our interests, goals or life circumstances/capacity change, as they often do, then we are prone to fall off the wagon from achieving very precise goals. If you are one of the ones who do better with a more rigid formula then by all means, go ahead and make a SMART goal, but perhaps allow yourself a bit of flexibility on how exactly you are going to attain it. For example, if my goal was to lose 10 lbs in 6 months, I might not need to set out a specific diet and exercise plan, but rather at the end of each day ask myself if what I’ve eaten and what activities I’ve done are taking me closer or further away from my goal. Incorporating self-care and many many other aspects of health can also work the same way. If you’d rather go without the specific goal, but just maybe want to be “healthier”, you can still achieve this by asking yourself at the end of each day, am I getting warmer or am I getting colder? Same can be said for broader goals, like nailing down our life’s “purpose”.  

Call it what you may, your purpose, your calling, being at harmony with yourself, it doesn’t matter, a lot of people spend a lot of time, money and often self turmoil trying to answer this question. It is only human nature to at some point ponder, “what am I doing here?”, “what should I be doing here?”, and attempt various ways to fill the void of feeling that “something is missing”. These are big questions and perhaps the reason the answer often seems so elusive is that there isn’t necessarily just one specific answer! Maybe it isn’t just one teeny tiny exact bulls-eye that we need to find. Perhaps fulfilling your “purpose” does not mean having a specific career or holding a certain position in a company. Maybe it isn’t being a perfect parent, living in a certain house, or giving back in a certain way. Perhaps it is more about being curious about what type of person you want to be, what makes you happy, and what “finger prints”you’d like to leave on the things and people you cross paths with. By looking at our purpose - or even something as simple as our New Year’s resolutions in a more flexible way, we might actually have an easier time achieving our mission.  

So just like the child’s game of warmer and colder, rather than trying to hit a tiny target (when you might not even know where to look for the target to begin with), maybe we could focus on just paying attention to our actions and ask ourselves if they are taking us closer or further from what we desire. Are we getting warmer or getting colder? This broader outlook can help unlock the paralysis that ensues when we aren’t exactly sure what to do because we don’t know if our action is going to hit the bulls-eye of the target. Instead, this format allows us the flexibility to try different things, wander different directions and see if we feel warmer or colder as we do them. With practice, you’ll be able to tell if what you’re doing is getting you closer to or further from where you want to be. If you keep asking yourself this question, you’ll soon find that you are purposely trending in the warmer direction. Before you know it, your cheerleaders will be excitedly bouncing up and down yelling “really hot!” red hot” burnnnning hot!!! So go ahead and take a step in any direction to start off the new year, then check your temperature, use it as your guide and keep going!