by Ethan Johnson
January 22, 2007

Nicole Hollander of Sylvia fame scored big (with me) when she tossed off a suggested definition of Nintendo:

A legal plea; literally "I didn't intend to do it."

This raced to the front of my mind when I read the following today (via Jules.ca):

So, for 2007, I decided that my theme is going to be "Living vibrant." What this means for me is to do things, be around people, and focus on stuff that makes me feel vibrant, will make my world a more vibrant place, or will help other people feel more vibrant.

Marlena and I tried an experiment last year where instead of fixating on hard and fast goals, we'd lay out a course for the year based around "intention." We did list expected outcomes, such as "travel more" was defined by what placed I hoped that we would have traveled to. But we wrote our lists and stashed them away, which provided truckloads of disappointment upon review at the end of 2006. The fact is, hard and fast goals would have been a tremendous help in achieving our stated intent. Not that there's no room for spontaneity or anything, but one likes to see concrete examples of change.

Marlena is big on circling things in catalogs as idea generators. One eternal project for us has been to fix up our master beedroom. We intend to finally finish it this year, but we need to determine what we're doing, when, and how. If the "when" can't be readily determined, the what and how go a long way toward that end. I bought some foam core boards last year so we could make "vision boards", which is a more artsy way of stating goals without stating goals. For example, I could find a photo of some hunky dude and replace his head with mine. In this way, I am stating an intent to be hunkier, and therefore certain milestones will need to be met to bring that about - assuming that hunkiness is in my future. Pretend we wanted to live in a mansion. Certain things need to happen before we can. Stating the intent visually is really powerful, and lays it out plainly for you (or anyone else) to see.

However, it is possible to be too "floaty" about intent, and end up accomplishing very little. "I want to be friendlier" may sound good, but what does that mean? Friendly how? How will you know if you achieved your stated intent? Will you be issuing customer satisfaction surveys to people around you? Will you declare "mission accomplished" regardless of what anyone else thinks? How about "I want to be healthier"? How so? How will you know that you are indeed healthier?

Whoa, speaking of healthier, I just checked out my Body Mass Index (BMI) score: 35.3. Relative to my height and weight, I am technically "obese." Oops! I don't see myself as obese, and to my knowledge nobody else seems to either. Maybe my personal trainer cousin does, but she's exceedingly polite. Crunching some numbers, it says here that realistically I need to lose 100 pounds in order to be "normal." Incidentally, back when I was my current height and that weight, I looked scrawny. Having more mass seems to exude "presence", which can be advantageous. Height alone can be good too, but height and mass = people generally respect this. My pal L-Dub stands roughly 6' 0", and when she was pregnant everything went "vertical" for the most part. So too with my extra mass - tall people can get away with more weight without looking rotund. I don't feel as though I'm one french fry away from a quadruple bypass, and my vital signs always come in well. Just the same, weight loss must be on my agenda for 2007.

Addendum: Sustainable weight loss. That's going to take a lot more work than "just" picking a popular diet plan or popping some pills.

As an aside, I occasionally joke that someone with my size and weight should be forced to introduce one's self as "[name], [position], [college]."

My advice to the Intenders:

• Develop a theme. Having a theme is a good idea, don't get me wrong. If my theme for 2007 is "improved total body fitness", then my goals should mesh with that theme. "Watch 50+ hours of TV in a sitting position" doesn't fit the theme very well.
• Develop concrete goals. "Lose weight" is a good start, but how much weight? Be prepared to fine tune the goal, as what sounded good on paper could be dangerous in practice. Trying to lose all 100 pounds in one year isn't realistic. How about 30? If weight is just melting away, then increase the goal. If 30 means starving yourself (literally) or other unsafe practices, maybe scale it back to 25 or 20. According to that BMI calculator (linked above), I need to lose at least 30 pounds to decrease my risk of various maladies. 30 pounds seems to be a good opening gambit.
• Tell the Universe. Whether this semantically strikes you as "new agey" or not misses the point. Keeping intentions to yourself by and large puts all of the pressure on yourself to bring about your ideals. Generally, goals are achieved by engaging others. If people know that you intend to lose weight, maybe they have some good pointers. How did other people lose weight? If they didn't, what went wrong for them? When did they hit "the wall?" You're not going to know unless you ask, and nobody will help you if you don't make your intentions clear.
• Review your goals monthly. A big part of achievement lies in accountability. Be accountable to yourself. You'll get regular feedback about your goals and what might be impeding your progress. Perhaps certain goals need to change for a variety of reasons. Rather than committing to a goal and finding out how you did 12 months later, commit to regular feedback and (necessary) adjustments.
• Track your progress. This may seem a bit excessive, especially if your theme/goal is "touchy feely", like "be more polite." Many actions can be quantified, however. If one's goal is to smile at strangers, make a chart of strangers met each day vs. smiles given. If one commits to exercising more, make a chart of what exercises were done each day. If you leave this as an open-ended commitment, you won't really know if you succeeded. Or how.

Improvement, especially self-improvement can often be derailed purely by semantics. "New Year's Resolutions" are generally accepted to be inherent failures. "Diet" is an invitation to the Big Binge after X days/weeks/months of self-denial. I applaud attempts at defusing such semantic time bombs to open the way for lasting improvement. If a theme is a forest, what are the trees? <EM>