are you running out of time?
time.
I think about time a lot. I’m the friend to make a ‘time is a social construct’ comment more often than is appreciated.
I love a fresh start, I love mornings, A new year, a turn of a page, but the collective decision that we as a society will all start fresh because our calendar says so… Who says so? Who decided?
It is time that reminds me what powerful meaning makers we humans are. We the people make December 31st a meaningful day. We make January 1st a day of inspiration, of overhaul, of starting a new, a blank canvas, a day off from work, a chance to get our lives together whether it falls on a Sunday or a Friday or a Wednesday.
As a culture we’re pretty obsessed with time. Why? It’s structure. If we hadn’t constructed time the world would feel pretty chaotic. We ground ourselves in routines, in schedules, in the certainty that after January comes February and after Monday comes Tuesday. But even this certainty is something we’ve created, growing accustomed to and making ourselves comfortable in its repetitive familiarity.
I know that time is based on the earth spinning and orbiting the sun, that the movement of the planet was calculated and recalculated to precision by generations far preceding our arrival with far less accurate tools and resources than we have today. We centralize and depend on the movement of the earth every day when you think about it this way, yet we never feel the earth rotating or orbiting on a physical level. We don’t question the importance of the influence of the sun and the moon here but when it comes to the influence of the planets in astrology for instance, many people write this off as superfluous, made up, an ideology not a science.
I’d like to think pondering time and spiraling into existential questions of what it really means to be here, right now, is a shared human mind-fuck. When you’re sitting in a lecture or taking a long shower and all of a sudden you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of your own creation wondering how the you got on this train of thought and if the conductor will be stopping to allow you to return to regularly scheduled programming.
Specifically around the western claimed new year many of us get extra reflective, resigning ourselves to making big changes because the calendar says so, society says so, pop culture says so.
I don’t know about you but historically any time I’ve set off to make a change in my life on the strict basis of it being a resolution, it inevitably fails. I’m aware this isn’t groundbreaking, for as mainstream as the practice of setting resolutions has become are equally mainstream jokes about the gyms being full on January 1st but relatively empty again three weeks later.
Why do we create this collective hype around changing our lives because our pretty grid page of dates tells us so, only to beat ourselves up when we fall through the cracks and back into our comfortable habits shortly thereafter?
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First we bite off more than we can chew. If we spend the whole year saving up to “start fresh” at the “right time”, we are more likely front load our 17 new habits onto the first day of the year, expecting ourselves to go from 0 to 100, transforming into an entirely new person when the clock strikes 12 in reverse Cinderella fashion.
Goal setting science will tell you that in order for habits to stick we actually have to build them off one another by starting small and adding in a stepwise fashion. As easy as it is to get caught up in ‘resolution hype’, it is equally as easy to feel like it is an all or nothing adventure. If you’re going to choose to become an entirely different person you have to go all in, which means overhauling your entire lifestyle at once, Right? Wrong.
Humans have a hard time with new, whether we identify as some who likes or dislikes change, new is uncertain and uncertain is uncomfortable. To stick it out through the uncomfortability we require not only self compassion and long-game mentality (more on that second), but if we’ve never learned how to swim we would probably be more effective dipping a toe and learning the basic strokes in the shallow end before jumping off the high dive and preforming a record breaking 400 m butterfly at olympic speed.
As a recovering perfectionist I completely and utterly fall victim to this regardless of time of year or what change I am trying to make. It is so easy to tell ourselves that if it’s not perfect, if it’s not all at once, if it’s not all encompassing: it’s not worth it. We should just wait to act until we can figure out how to act perfectly. Enter my dear friend analysis paralysis. This is the flip side of the coin where instead of biting off more than we can chew, we don’t bite at all. We sit around preparing to eat and end up starving ourselves.
This brings me to that which I am resolving to for the year, even if not labeling it my new year’s resolution: to take imperfect action is always better than taking no action. Starting SOMEWHERE because the hardest step is the first one.
The antidote to perfectionism is many small imperfect steps, breaking down the illusion that the only worthwhile way of doing something is perfectly, because there is no perfectly.
‘Perfect’ is a strategy the brain implements to try and protect itself from failing and from discomfort. Preparing to fight discomfort before actually putting ourselves in the position to step through it makes us feel in control and out of harms way.
This parallels the above in which the brain tricks us into implementing every change at once, overwhelming our tolerance for newness, and leaving us again doing nothing because we can’t sustain doing everything.
The brain is clever and sneaky. It might only be trying to help but self-sabotage leaves us feeling stuck and ashamed. Whether we fizzle out too fast or drag out the planning and preparing to avoid acting altogether, we find ourselves back at square one with nothing to show but a harmful narrative that we just ‘aren’t the type of person who can do or be (insert “failed” resolution here).
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Second is mindset, the magic ingredient, the secret sauce. You might be tired of hearing that mindset is the missing piece in wherever it is you’re feeling stuck but I’m not talking about telling yourself positive affirmations in the mirror.
Self talk is conscious and unconscious too, and yes self talk MATTERS. As someone who used to have horribly negative self talk I stand in the camp that beating yourself up isn’t going to get you where you want to be. You might think you’re motivating yourself to succeed but often you’re succeeding in spite of yourself and that negative reenforcement. We’re as pavlovian as the dogs salivating at the ringing bell.
What I think is less discussed in popular culture because it’s not as simple or accessible is the subconscious piece of mindset. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling yourself you want to be the person who works out every day or starts that side hustle freelance project or goes to sleep and wakes up an hour earlier everyday- when something in your subconscious narrative you hold as part of your identity says otherwise, you are facing an uphill climb so steep it will be infinitely more difficult to reach the summit.
Think of hiking a mountain with multiple routes, the route of ignoring the subconscious ‘stuff’ for lack of a better all encompassing term is the uphill free climb so daunting you barely even begin before throwing in the towel based on whatever excuse is accessible and feels the least threatening.
Whereas the longer but more rewarding route that takes you up in spiral staircase fashion with breathtaking views at every turn will not only get you to the top but make you a better climber, more confident and agile in your future endeavors attacking future mountains that once seemed out of reach.
The book Atomic Habits explains is excellent and explains all of this in more scientific yet very digestible ways. If you cling to the idea of new years as the time to begin again, I’d highly recommend making Atomic Habits the first book on your 2024 reading list. It breaks down how to make and break habits by implementing strategies that might not make you feel superhuman and like a brand new person on day one, but they stick and they build your confidence in your ability to create change in your life one step at a time.
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Third we’re circling back to astrology. I’m not going to launch into an argumentative essay about why astrology is real and relevant here, if that ever happens it will get its own post entirely. But even if you’re an astrology skeptic I think this idea of ‘new year’ being constructed is even further apparent here.
I wouldn’t call myself an astrology expert by any means, but I do believe in the influence of the planets and sun and moon and stars on us individually as well as collectively. This year I’ve listened to a few podcasts with experts explaining astrological forecasts for the year 2024 and have felt quite grounded and amazed by the teachings.
First off a reiterated theme of the year of 2024 is taking action, clarity through action, shifting out of dreaming and planning and into tangible steps forward. This is something I’ve been feeling intuitively in the months leading up to the new year on a personal level. For more 2024 specific predictions see the episodes linked below.
Non-specific to 2024 is the knowledge that in accordance with the astrological calendar, the ‘new year’ actually begins with Aries towards the end of March each year. Aries is a fire sign and classified as action oriented, confident, bold and career and desire driven. Clear on what they want and going after it, Aries feels reflective of what we’re all striving towards around January 1st, and yet this energy of getting out there and getting after it does feels more in consistent with the season of spring (if you’re in the northern hemisphere like I am).
Whereas January 1st falls within Capricorn, focused and pragmatic, an energy of building from the ground up. Capricorn is motivated and in it for the long game. On astrologer described Capricorn season as a time for going within and nourishing our roots, building our discipline and practices so that when Aries season rolls around in March we have the resources to take the bold actions we planted in the weeks leading up to it.
Viewing it through this lens feels a lot more intuitive to me, planting the seeds now for what we want to create and grow into as the year unfolds and we evolve with it. Where you’ll end the year may be unconceivable to your beginning of the year self, so instead of trying to plan and predict your entire year why not focus on biting off what you can chew and taking your goal setting in strides.
Set intentions, focus on how you want to feel, and take imperfect action that clarifies the next steps in your process.
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To tie it altogether I named this post after the song lyric from Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time? Write day and night like you’re running out of time…” I’m not making traditional ‘new years resolutions’ but in the season of planting seeds I am committing to writing imperfectly and putting it out there to step through the discomfort of it all.
Too long I’ve sat around making excuses for why I couldn’t do it, for why it wasn’t time to start because it wasn’t perfect. I don’t want to run out of time. The only wrong decision is the decision to never start because when you don’t put yourself in the action as messy and imperfect and small it might seem, you don’t receive the clarity and create the changes that can only arise in the doing.
There is no right time to start, you aren’t running out of time. The decision to begin, to change, to choose again is always yours and it doesn’t have to be January 1st for you to pivot. You only run the risk of running out of time when you refuse to enter the race. One foot in front of the other, let’s start today.
Astrology podcast episodes :
