What is your New Year's evolution?

This idea has changed how I experience life for the last five years and it is so simple.

It is the idea of a New Year's evolution. In brief the idea is as follows.

1. More than 40% of the population make New Year's resolutions (source) i.e. committing to change a specific behaviour or activity, e.g. go to gym three times per week.
2. However 80% of resolutions fail by the second week of February (source) and failure may prompt people to give up the resolution altogether.
3. Failure is often the result of the environment changing, i.e. getting busy at work, kids going back to school etc. In a fast changing world our goals need to be agile. SMART goals (specific, measurable, achieveable, relevant and timebound) over longer time-frames and/or in times of change can be too rigid.
4. Failure may also stem from the resolution being something you feel you 'have to' change or avoid rather than something you 'want to' become. There are two problems with 'have to' goals as follows.
5. Firstly 'have to' goals are often done out of a sense of duty to others and research tells us loud and clear that goals that we take on from others are far less likely to be achieved, i.e. extrinsic goals (see here for more).
6. Secondly 'have to' goals are typically avoidance oriented, i.e. goals you move away from such as stop smoking, lose weight etc are far less likely to be pursued and achieved compared to approach goals that you move towards such as getting fit enough to play sport with your children.
7. Enter the New Year's evolution, i.e. a goal focused on activities and attitudes that will help you be a better, more evolved, version of yourself in the year ahead. Evolutions are not only approach oriented and agile they actually bank on you having set-backs at some point in time.
8. With an evolution a set-back does not mean you have failed, it just means you are human. In fact if you don't relapse on your evolution then you probably haven't set a big enough goal. Set backs are often where the greatest learnings come from so to avoid them or see them as failure is a missed opportunity for further growth.
9. Evolutions are determined solely by a higher order outcome set by you based on a deep need for personal progress and development. There are many pathways to achieve your evolution so if one pathway doesn't work there are others to focus your energy on.
10. Evolutions become a filter through which you view the year, changing how you see every situation you are in, and providing a new way to look at the past, present and future.

OK, enough on the theory. What does it look like in practice?

In 2015 my evolution was 'turn around'. After a long, tough period following my dad's death (dad and me pictured below) I decided at the end of 2014 that I would not slide any further down the emotional continuum. The cost to me and others was beginning to significantly outweigh the many benefits that grief had to offer.

Did I stop experiencing the emotions associated with my grief in 2015? No. But when I did I acknowledged the feelings as a pathway to getting back on track, as opposed to focusing me on the loss of my mentor, friend and father. Beyond this however I started pursuing a range of actions that would ensure 2015 was a year of turn around.

I started running again, going to the gym, reading books and articles about human performance, choosing to only watch TV and movies that were funny or uplifting, spending more quality time with my family, investing in my friendships, and the list went on.

My New Year's evolution in 2016 was 'positive change' and was intentionally more career focused. I knew this year would be one of significant change and uncertainty following the acquisition of our organisation. The integration presented many great opportunities and synergies, but as in any M&A journey, there were points along the way were challenging and unexpected.

At each juncture the 'positive change' filter prompted me to search for how this change will ultimately add value to my clients, my colleagues, my new company and my career. The answer sometimes came quickly, at other times it would take weeks, and invariably it required additional input from others or me to ensure the change was ultimately positive.

2017 was 'step up'. No my evolution in 2017 was not to start my own dance troop inspired by the B-grade dance movie franchise. Rather whenever I felt like stepping back or standing still this evolution was my prompt to embrace the situation, or as Sheryl Sandberg would say 'lean in'.

What a year to choose that one it turned out to be. Our company was acquired again but far more significantly my mum (below) died in 2017 of a massive heart attack, totally out of the blue. My wife and I did 601 cardiac compressions before the paramedics arrived, but she had gone.

To refer to this as 'positive change' or an opportunity to 'step up' would be as ridiculous as it is insensitive. However finding and holding onto the positive memories and moments and striving to ensure a positive legacy from her beautiful life in that time of great sadness, as well as stepping up to support my family through this time proved fundamental to my grief journey (see here and here for my articles about lessons from loss).

It also made clear what my 2018 evolution was going to be... 'take the shot'. I've never been a big risk taker but mum's unexpected death made the incredible gift of life more apparent than ever before. So too life's impermanence. This year was all about going beyond stepping up, evolving to stepping out, striving to make every moment matter and taking nothing for granted.

So after 20+ years of stable and safe employment I left my most recent job at the International CEO Forum (now owned by Gartner) with fabulous clients and colleagues and started my own business in the high performance leadership, culture and change arena. I started writing the book I have been talking about for over a decade based on my work with over 1000 CEOs, 10000 leaders and 100s of the world's top thought leaders.

On a personal front my wife and I also renovated two homes selling one and moving into the other. We ticked two big trips off our bucket list and somewhere in there one of us may or may not have got a tattoo! Less talk more action was definitely how 2018 played out.

So what about 2019? Next year is all about 'living exponentially'.

What does that mean I hear you ask? It's all based on the principle that the world is changing at an accelerating rate, and if we want to stay ahead of the change or be a driver of it we need to accelerate how we change too.

If you could graph accelerating change it would look like an exponential curve, as opposed to a linear curve where change is constant and incremental, hence the reference to living 'exponentially'.

The challenge with living exponentially is that progress can feel slow to start with, as the graph below reveals, but over time exponential thinking trumps incremental thinking at a staggering rate.

A great example of this is learning to ride a bike. To start with it would be quicker to walk or run instead of ride but after lots of practice and no doubt many falls suddenly you stay upright and can travel much faster with less effort than if you were on foot, assuming of course you don't give up.

So what does 'living exponentially' look like?

Living exponentially is less about what you do and more about how you think.

In my last article I shared 10 mindframes that define exponential thinkers. This year is about living these mindframes everyday and searching for more patterns of thinking that free us up from a linear existence to one that is exponential.

Two more exponential mindframes I have already come across are thanks to Dr Andy Walshe, former High Performance Director at Redbull (pictured below). Andy's life has been dedicated to 'human optimisation' and 'hacking talent'. Andy talks about two mindframes that are essential for excellence and doing the greatest work of our lives.

#11 Threat vs Challenge - Andy's training interventions deliberately push people to the edge of their perceived capability or capacity. Doing so is the only way to 'see what's in the tank' according to Andy.

Sadly many of us live life never realising, even remotely, how much additional capacity we have. This is because we strive to stay in our comfort zone and avoid threat at all cost. Andy works with his clients to retrain their brains to see things as a challenge not a threat.

Don't get me wrong there are things in the world that are genuine threats, but more often than not we fail to differentiate between 'perceived' risk and 'actual' risk. 99 times out of 100 the risks we experience are far from life threatening and almost always can be recovered from.

More importantly the feelings that come with stepping out of our comfort zone are a clue that we in unchartered territory. That's where the learning happens. That's where progress is made. As the old saying goes 'that's were the magic happens!'

#12 Assumption vs Assessment - Andy describes this as a fundamental skill that applies across all elite performers. In the absence of information we typically jump to conclusions based on our previous experiences and knowledge.

This should be a wonderful skill however when combined with our 'threat' orientation mentioned previously the conclusion we often reach is often negative. Instead we need to rewire our response to slow down our thinking and assess the situation.

This plays out for us everyday. Someone speaks to us with a harsh tone and we instantly think... 'they are rude' or 'they are a jerk'. Conversely we might jump to the conclusion that 'I have upset them' or 'I must have done something wrong'.

A more constructive response is to pause, take a breath, and consider what's really going on with that person, what could be making them speak that way, what can I do to find out if there is something wrong and how can I support them? Alternatively you could assess your own response and ask did I misinterpret them, how am I feeling right now, is there something going on behind the scenes for me making me filter the behaviors of others this way.

As my fourth grade teacher said to me "to assume makes an ass of u and me".

No doubt you have some great exponential mindframes too. I think we can all afford to live a lot more exponentially so please do share your ideas.

Have a wonderful 2019 and all the best with developing your own New Year's evolution.

Rich Hirst is a leadership, change and high performance psychologist. His insights are based on real world experiences from his work with 10,000+ leaders and over 1,000 CEOs, underpinned by his knowledge as an organisational psychologist and expertise as a change agent supporting organisations for more than 20 years going through major transformation.

For more information please go to www.richhirst.com or contact me via email on [email protected]. Please find below links to my previous monthly posts.

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For more on New Year's evolutions click here.