NEW YEAR AND NEW HABITS
Happy new year everyone. While not necessarily in January, most cultures celebrate the start of the new year. Many New Zealanders celebrate new year twice with the Māori new year Matariki during the southern hemisphere winter in addition to the 1 January, Scots (often enthusiastically!) celebrate their tradition of Hogmanay, while the Chinese new year in February is increasingly being recognised internationally. New year is also about reflection, renewal, and fresh starts. In the West (and in many eastern cultures too) we have a custom of new year resolutions. Traced back to the Babylonians and the Romans, new year resolutions are also an important historical aspect of, for example, the Christian tradition. There is also some science to support the importance of new year as a time for making changes in our lives. According to When by Dan Pink, time-based milestones such as new year, are a useful temporal landmark for navigating our way through life.
New year and the weeks that follow, as with Christmas (see previous blog post), can be a difficult time for children and young people in residential and foster care, and care leavers. The year that has passed may have been a difficult one, and even if that is not the case, for many their year ahead may be filled with uncertainly. However, if we can move beyond the new year’s resolution as a rather hackneyed cliché, this time of year can also be a very valuable opportunity for more normalised conversations about hopes, aspirations and specific goals for the year ahead, and as importantly, the actions, systems, and strategies that will need to be put in place to support and effect such desired changes. And that goes for practitioners and managers too.
My favourite book of 2019 was Atomic Habits by James Clear
https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits. If you’ve not come across this title yet I’d thoroughly recommend that you get hold of it and give it a read (or at least watch or listen to one of Clear’s many presentations and interviews available on YouTube). In essence, rather than focusing on vague goals, the refreshing idea of this book is that by making thoughtful small (atomic) changes in our behaviour that we consistently repeat until they become almost automatic (i.e. a new habit is formed), benefits compound over time, we see ourselves differently, and desired changes are more likely to be sustained i.e. achievement is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations, and those daily habits provide the concrete evidence of our new evolving identity and growth. For Clear, “habits are the compound interest of self-improvement” and “if you can get just 1 percent better [at something] each day, you’ll [theoretically if you do the maths] end up with results that are nearly 37 time better after one year” (unfortunately the reverse is also true)!
While this ‘self-help’ book is very much targeted at the business market and professionals, and is definitely not a therapeutic book, I was struck by its potential relevance to all, including many children and young people in residential and foster care and care leavers. If a ‘self-help’ book is good enough for us, might it sometimes also be useful for those that we work with?
So, it got me thinking. Even if life can sometimes be chaotic, if say a 15 year old in residential or foster care wants to be the kind of person who, for example, has friends, is a good friend, reads, plans, goes to the gym, eats well, is punctual, tidy, safe, manages their money well, passes school exams, or gets a job etc. what are the habits that they could be developing now, and how might you or your team support them in that? Does your organisation support that kind of work? If so, who actually does it and how does that fit with your current care and preparation for leaving care planning processes? If you organisation doesn’t, should it? Could it, and if so, how?
Clear’s book (also available as an e-book) is available from https://www.bookdepository.com/Atomic-Habits/9781847941831 (Amazon, and in or orderable from most good Australian and New Zealand bookshops).
I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at: iain@betteroutcomes.co.nz
Kia kaha (Stay Strong).
Iain