Growing up, I moved every 18 months, on average. I went to three grade schools, two middle schools, and two high schools. Moving so often had pluses and minuses. The downsides were mostly about losing what felt familiar. Like friends and your bedroom. The pluses revolved around everything being new. A new bedroom, home, neighborhood, teacher, classmates, and new friends. Overall, it felt like a reset. A chance to leave behind what you didn’t like and start over. But why do you keep needing a reset?
Katy Milkman talks about the power of fresh starts in her book “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.” I listened to it on my way back home from 2nd trip to Rochester, NY, in 24 hours. My daughter packed her car keys with her laundry and sent them home with me earlier that day when I came out of her dorm room at the end of the school year. So I had plenty of time to listen to and revisit passages in the book during my drive. The topic of fresh starts made sense to me. My daughter was definitely ready for a fresh start to the summer after her challenging freshman year in college and the car-key snafu. It is a seven-hour drive each way to Rochester, NY.
The idea is that you shed what may be blocking you from reaching a goal and, as a result, feel invigorated because you have separated yourself from it. You also need to develop a detailed plan for how you’ll reach your goal. My writing sprint was my fresh start. I started with a clean slate, even though it wasn’t tied to a specific event like the new year, a new season, or a birthday. It was tied to a commitment I made when I paid for access to a group that was committed to writing together for a week.
What I failed to recognize and plan for was all the obstacles that could stand in my way. As I mentioned in another post, I was traveling multiple times during the week I participated in the sprint. I didn’t have a plan beyond writing at least one sentence each day. I did that and more. Not because I had a detailed plan, but because I was committed. Like all those who go to the gym at the start of the New Year, that works for a while, but then it fades. Some days, it’s hard to get to the gym, and missed days can snowball until you lose motivation altogether.
My obstacle wasn’t planning for the day when I didn’t know how to write something. A battle scene was my unforeseen obstacle. In truth, it wasn’t unforeseen. I knew I didn’t know how to do it. I just thought I would figure it out when the time came.
Growing up, my obstacle was not looking at what I wanted to change in our new home and how to make those changes. To be fair to myself, that is not something many 8-12-year-olds figure out.
So the elephant in the room is figuring out what obstacles are getting in the way of you reaching your goal. Adjusting the goal if some of those obstacles are insurmountable. Milkman also points out that you need to enjoy the journey to reach your goal. If everything about it is painful, you won’t make it. While training for Ironman triathlons, I wouldn’t say the training process was always enjoyable. The enjoyable part was the satisfaction of completing that day’s training. And to have more satisfying days than unsatisfied ones. The satisfaction came from it being hard, but from being able to complete it.
I listened to the book in the summer of 2021. I need to listen to it again to see what I can employ in my writing journey now.