Kickstart the New Year with a Self-Audit - NirAndFar

Kickstart the New Year with a Self Audit hey everyone, this is Nir Eyal and welcome to the near and Far Podcast. With me today, as always, is Nick Gray. Nick, how's it going?

It's going good. Happy Chinese New Year. Are you guys celebrating there a lot? I'm in New York now and wow, there was a lot of fireworks.

Oh, Singapore is amazing. They take Chinese New Year to the next level. It's incredible out here. It's the Year of the Rabbit and we just had a big festive dinner with my wife's family, who's Chinese, and so it's been a lot of fun.

That's fantastic. Well, it's a new year and it's a time to think about how we kickstart the New Year with the self audit. Is it okay if I just start reading into it and then we'll hear from you after the next section?

Perfect, let's do it.

So for those that are just joining, I read Nir's articles and then Nir will give a little bit of feedback approximately after every paragraph or two. But let's just start in with this one. Kickstart the New Year with a Self audit. Practicing introspection using these methods will improve your self awareness, confidence and motivation in the New Year. As New Year's Eve approaches, so does the customary exercise of introspection and self reflection. The practice of examining ourselves can be a powerfully healthy one. Done correctly, it leads to self awareness, which increases our ability to exercise control over our emotions and provides a greater sense of well being. But done incorrectly, self reflection can go awry. Sometimes the examination of ourselves leads to self loathing. Rather than looking inward to better understand ourselves, we may become absorbed in comparing ourselves to others, which only leads to insecurity and anxiety about the future. As the unattributed saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy. That's no way to start the New year. Arming yourself with a few methods for positive self reflection can turn the traditional New Year's practice into an insightful experience that boosts your self belief, confidence and motivation for the coming year. It's important to note that you won't gain greater self awareness overnight. Self reflection is a lifelong practice, but the spirit of New Year's is a strong catalyst for such a practice. Now I'm going to go to get Near's feedback before the next section, but as I'm recording this, it's January 22nd and it's so funny because I have written out to do my New Year reflection from last year. So this is coming as perfect time. And if you're listening to this thinking, oh yeah, well, the time has already passed. I think NIR is going to tell us. It's never too late to do it. Nir, thoughts on this?

It's never too late to do it. You're exactly right.

And of course you know that we know that these arbitrary days on the calendar do make us more motivated to take. Take a step back and make it as part of our ritual to consider our life and our trajectory. But of course we can do this all year round, but why miss the opportunity? If we have some kind of reminder in our calendars to take this opportunity, we absolutely should. And so I thought this was an apropos piece, given all the New Year celebrations, to take a step back and make sure that if we're going to do this practice that we do it right. Because like many things in pop psychology, there is a right way and a wrong way.

Do you use any specific frameworks or are you going to tell us one that you use yourself or that you recommend?

Coming right up.

Great, so let's get started with that. The next section is called offer yourself compassion as you self audit. Maintain unconditional positive regard for yourself. That means offering compassion to yourself. Even if you feel you've done wrong or could have handled something better this past year. Look at yourself with curiosity, not contempt. Judgment and shame only elicit defensiveness. Acceptance fosters safety, which invites honesty and self exploration. Of course it's important to take responsibility for any failures or mistakes you've made. But don't forget that everyone makes mistakes with wisdom, particularly the wisdom that comes from honest self reflection. We learn that failure is temporary and doesn't speak to our value as as a human being. Viewing ourselves with unconditional positive regard can also spark self betterment and keep us emotionally fit, fostering self actualization, self confidence and motivation.

Yeah, so this is, you know, I think the first point, that quote that I say to myself almost daily, which is that comparison is the thief of joy is really important. I think as we think about what we want for the New year, it's incredibly important to make sure we don't desire things just because other people desire them. There's this concept of mimetic desire proposed by Rene Girard and basically what he says is that everything except our biological needs we desire just because someone else wants them. And so it's very, very important to not desire these things simply because we've seen other people. The fact that other people have them if other people struggle for them and want them, doesn't mean we have to struggle for them and want them. We should be very mindful about what we are going to devote our time to based on our own values, not someone else's.

What resonated with me from this section was the idea that maybe I focus on all the negatives and this is saying, look, yes, take responsibility for your failures, but kind of don't be too hard on yourself. Know that the wisdom that I'm getting out of this reflection is what's helpful in the process, right?

And it's so easy to fall into that trap if you are not conscious of the fact that you want to do this reflection with compassion rather than contempt. Because if you look at all those negatives, if you look at all the things you yet haven't accomplished, it's very easy to slip into this mindset that somehow you are broken or you are bad or you are deficient in some way. And that contempt can lead you to some very dark places. As opposed to. We know that people who offer themselves more self compassion and think of their goals through a more of a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. For the work of Carol Dweck, it's a much healthier outlook on life. So it's not that somehow I'm broke and I'm deficient, I need to go crawl in my bed and never leave. It's more of okay, with self compassion, hey, here's what I'm capable to do, but with the understanding that, hey, I'm human too, and I'm going to make mistakes along the way. But it's a constant process. I think many times we think that our goals and objectives are somehow a finish line. I think this metaphor has been embedded into our psyche, that everything we do has to have a start and an end. But of course, that's not life, right? The end of life is death. It's not completion of some arbitrary goal. You're going to have to work at this stuff for the rest of your life. And having that attitude, knowing that you're in it for the long haul, gives us the ability to have more patience with ourselves to say, hey, if a goal takes a long time, that's okay. It's about consistent forward momentum, not some type of arbitrary goal.

I had an experience where I was just reflecting about how different my life is from the past year. It was before I had launched my book, before I had done some other things. And in the short term, while I'm frustrated with my progress on the year long evaluation, I feel like I can see the needle moving a little bit. Well, let me go into the next section because we're here to hear from nir's expertise. Dig Deep with the Right Questions Self reflection is key to taking control of your life, happiness and success. It's the first step to understanding and overcoming long held misconceptions and limitations. And that involves asking yourself questions. For example, what situation or events were stressful for you this past year? What situations or events made you happy? Have you struggled to connect with certain friends or family members? Additionally, we have to be sure we ask ourselves the right questions. What are the right questions you ask? Well, one rule is to ensure those self posed inquiries ask what, not why, why? Questions can cause us to obsess over our problems. Studies show they lead to greater anxiety and symptoms of depression. If you ask yourself why you feel or behave a certain way, the answer you land on will likely confirm your preexisting beliefs rather than uncover truthful insights. What questions, on the other hand, for example, what was I feeling in that situation? Rather than why did that upset me so much? May reduce negative feelings and attitudes by helping you to name your emotions. Also, the right questions are solutions focused, not problem focused. Ask yourself questions that shift your focus to the possible solution of something that's weighing on your mind. Looking at a problem from this perspective not only identifies potential answers to the problem, but also increases your confidence in your ability to solve future dilemmas.

Yeah, this to me, I think when I learned this principle was a real paradigm shift for me because you know, I had always asked myself this why type of question. And of course, you know, as I wrote here in the article, and as you, as you read, you're always going to find a reason why. And many times those why questions will just lead you to ruminate along the same thought pattern that got you to this place in the first place. So that if you ask yourself, hey, why did I do this or that, you're likely to fall back on, well, it's because I have a penchant for this or that or I'm this type of person or I have that kind of personality, or I'm a Sagittarius or whatever the case might be, you're going to fall back on those old patterns as opposed to these what questions. For example, what was I feeling in that situation? Acknowledges that these emotions and feelings you don't control. These many people think that you control your emotions. You know, when you say, oh, what made me happy? What made me sad? What made me angry? We think we somehow can control those emotions. We don't realize that that's not in our control. We do not control our emotions any more than you might control the urge to sneeze. Right. Once you feel that urge, you already have the urge, right? You didn't beckon it. It's there. You can't make it go away. The only thing you can do is to decide how you will respond to that urge and similarly, how will you respond to those emotions. So just like when you feel the urge to sneeze, are you going to sneeze all over everyone and make them sick? No. You take out a tissue and the responsible thing to do, how you will respond to that urge is to cover your face. So the same thing goes with our emotions. And it's a very, very important lesson to ask the what question rather than the why question. Because again, you'll come up with the why. But if you have the what, you can take action today to prevent going off track or not doing the thing you said you were going to do tomorrow.

Don't quit self reflection after the new Year. Think of the new year as the beginning of your self reflection journey rather than a once a year exercise. If you want your introspection to generate insights about yourself, then you have to make it part of your routine. Yet self reflection requires a balance. We should neither obsess over nor ignore ourselves. In fact, studies show that people who dedicate too much time to introspection may experience more anxiety and negative attitudes about themselves. Still, we do need the space to ponder our problems in order to work through them. And in this digital world where our devices are just inches away, ready to feed our distraction, we have to make time for that introspection. That means timeboxing 15 minutes or so every week for self reflection in our calendars. The good news is that by becoming self aware, you become less likely to veer off track when difficult emotions surface. Which is why self reflection is such a compelling practice for the new year.

Yeah. So to reinforce this point, this was also something that kind of shocked me is that too much introspection can actually be detrimental. And why would that be right? If you think about it, why would thinking about. If we all know that a life well lived has to be examined, we need to introspect. We need to think about our goals, we need to think of our priorities. How can that lead to bad outcomes? How can that lead to a place where people suffer from more anxiety and negative attitudes about themselves? Well, because I think it, it Lacks a few things. One, it gives us this sense that the world is all about us and we know that one of the best ways to improve our well being is to help others. And so if we're stuck in our own heads too much, it can lead to this rumination cycle. And, and two, it doesn't put enough emphasis on action. It puts a lot of emphasis on feelings. And I think one of the things that really bugs me about the self help industry these days is that there's some kind of search for, you know, you always hear people saying stuff like, you know, you need to search for who you really are and spend time with yourself so that you can connect with your real soul, your true self. And I think by and large that's a myth. And I think it's a, it's a pretty dangerous myth because it leads to a lot of nasal gazing. There is no definitive you, there is no true self. I don't believe in this concept that the more you sit and think, the more you're going to understand what you really want. No, you understand what you really want by doing the things you say you're going to do. And so that's why I think it's much more important than just introspection is a penchant for action is actually doing these things and making sure you don't do the things that would otherwise take you off track.

I love that idea of time boxing 15 minutes or so every week for self reflection. Some friends and I do a monthly email recap to each other. It's a friends, we look at our calendar and we say how much family time did we have? How much friendship time, how did we do money? How did we do on our careers, how did we do for the things that we want to work on? Health and fitness. And it is almost like a long rambling personal note that we send to each other. It's only shared amongst four of my friends and we're vulnerable in it. But it's a unique time each month that we have to look back at our calendars and see where we ended up spending our time. It makes me think about this idea that you had of time boxing 15 minutes or so every week for self reflection in your calendar.

Yeah. And that's a practice. I love this practice of sharing it with your friends. What I do for myself and sometimes it doesn't even take me 15 minutes and it's back to timeboxing your values. Right. Turning your values, values into time. That's really what it's all about. You're doing it retrospectively, I think it's also very powerful to do it proactively. Where you're looking at your calendar and you're saying, okay, what are my values and how do I make sure that those values have a place on my calendar? So if health and wellness is important to me, do I have a bedtime, do I have time for exercise? Do I have time to read a book? Is it on my schedule? If time with family is important and friends, is it on my schedule for the week ahead? And of course, time at work, am I spending all my time doing reactive work? Or do I actually have time for reflection as well so that I can do that hard work that requires creativity, focus, and working without distraction. So turning your values into time in that 15 minute weekly reflection, it's imperative that it also has that place on your schedule. One other thing I would say you asked about my practices. So not only do I do this 15 minutes every week to make my weekly calendar based on my values, I also do have a monthly review. Kind of like what you do, where I have these different aspects of my life and I look back at the month that passed. So I kind of do this review of how the month went. But then every year I also sit down in the various areas of my life. Relationship with different people in my life, different goals I have, how am I doing now? What I've learned over the years is that having an outcome driven goal really doesn't work for me, right? What does work for me? So what is an outcome driven goal? I want a certain level of money in the bank, I want a certain number of blog subscribers. I want, whatever the outcome might be, I want to meet someone new for my love life. Whatever the case might be in your life, having that outcome driven goal, I've discovered, is not really the way to go because there's so many exogenous factors outside of your control that really the better way is to only focus on the things that you actually have control over. What can you actually affect in your life? So I've actually changed all my monthly goals from these outcome driven goals to process driven goals. So with fitness, for example, I don't have a goal to be a certain weight or, you know, a certain body fat percentage, or lift a certain amount of reps and sets at the gym. I don't have those kind of metrics anymore. What I do instead is number of times that I did the consistent action, right? That's much more important to me. So for example, this year I started swimming, right? So the goal is just to go swim in the pool for 15 minutes every day. That's it. It's not oh I need to make a certain time. It's not oh I need to, you know, burn a certain amount of calories. It's just do the action consistently and so you can actually back into many things that you yourself control in their entirety. So I used to have this goal of oh, I want to get to so many email subscribers. There's a lot of things I can't control about how many people find my blog and whether they're going to subscribe to my newsletter. What I can control is did I write an article this week that is a hundred percent in my control? So I would encourage people to think about for the new year, what are those process driven goals rather than the outcome driven goals.

Now I have a special ask for our listeners. You may hear some other podcasts that are asking for you to rate and review them and I want to tell you why this is really important. As near has been restarting his podcast, it is so helpful for us to get just five more reviews. That is our goal. And so if you can help us out to be one of those five, leave a little review and whatever podcast app you're listening to us, it really means a lot. You're listening to near and Far, Business Behavior and the Brain. Nir Eyal is the best selling author of Hooked how to build Habit forming products and also.

How to control your attention and choose your life. Near blogs@nearandfar.com that's spelled n I r and far f a r.com and he has a weekly newsletter that he mentioned that is filled with science backed strategies for designing healthy habits your customers will love. If you have any suggestions on things you want us to talk about, send a tweet. You can tweet it at nearby ccme. I'm ickgreynews. Thank you so much for listening to the last episode of near and Far Business Behavior and the Brain. We got some great episodes coming up for you in 2023. Stay tuned.