Resolving to Have Smart Character

At the start of each New Year I go through my annual ritual of buying a new journal and taking some time to create my New Year’s Resolutions.   As a University of Waterloo Recreation Grad, I know how to write “SMART” goals and I ensure that my resolutions are specific, measureable, attainable, realistic/relevant, and time specific.   I lay out elaborate critical paths which describe what I will do every day to achieve my exceptionally smart goals and I write rhetoric like “This year is going to be different” believing that a crisp set of new journal pages will somehow help me accomplish the very elaborate plan I have created to achieve my New Year’s Resolutions.  Like most people, I always have the best intentions but inevitably I fall off track somewhere around January 21^st.  Predictably another New Year begins and I find myself cracking open a new journal to fill with the same smart resolutions and rhetoric.

With the start of a new decade I thought it was time to reevaluate this annual ritual that seems to have only amounted to filling my bookshelf with 8 or 9 half empty journals.  Obviously my resolutions have not been as “SMART” as I thought because I seem to repeat them year in year out.   My Rec training also taught me that even with the best of critical paths and the smartest of goals, success is not always guaranteed.   A critical component in setting smart goals is that they are “relevant”, meaning that the goal relates and supports an overall purpose.   In a professional context smart goals are relevant if they support the organizations’ purpose which is often defined by the organizations’ mission statement.  Resolutions are examples of personal goals, so I guess for my resolutions to be relevant they need support my own personal set of values or more concisely, my character.   Considering the past resolution success I have achieved, I wondered if the reason why I consistently failed was because my resolutions, although seemingly specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time specific, they missed the mark on connecting to my character therefore the resolutions missed the critical smart component of relevance.   I needed to explore this disconnect further.

I opened my standby reference for anything leadership related, Stephen Covey’s 7 Steps of Highly Effective People and reviewed his discussion of Personality Ethic vs Character Ethic.   When someone is centered from a Personality Ethic perspective, they focus on improving their personality, communications, interests and behaviour to influence people and believe that positive thinking is what is required for success, subscribing to mantras like “If you can dream it, you can achieve.”  While Covey (and I) agree that these are important within a professional standpoint, setting personal goals from this perspective means that you are setting goals to potentially please others.  Ergo, if you do not receive external recognition by seeing that you have “pleased someone” even if you achieve your goal, you believe you have failed.

Moreover Covey explains when you create or change behavior based on this Personality Ethic, you may be able to get by in the short term however “eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and failure will replace short-term success.”[1]

Covey in his discussion of Personality vs Character Ethic largely speaks to how people use the two sets of ethics to influence others rather than how these ethics impact one’s ability to set smart goals.  However when I reviewed the concept, I felt that it provided me strong insight on how I could make my resolutions more relevant.  I needed more character less personality.

I opened up several of the journals I stated in the last decade and reviewed the list of resolutions I had created.  Although the wording was different year to year, the themes were always consistent, with one topic always being top of mind – My Weight.    I have always struggled with body image and I can say that for the first time in my adult life I am not been motivated to eat well or exercise to lose weight.    Nevertheless, in my personal mission statement, written in 2005,  there is a statement that says

“I protect my healthy as my most precious resource.   I know that my body will only be able to support my dreams if I invest into its healthy development every day.”

I can be honest and admit that although I may have written the above statement, I never walked the walk in terms of matching my behaviour to support this thesis.   My behaviour to get to the gym or eat properly was more motivated by weight and even if I ate well and worked out if I didn’t see results on the scale, I felt like I was failing.   I had this preconceived image, that success was measured by hitting a magical number (which sometimes was as unrealistic as 125lbs) so that I could get into a size 6 or so I could confidently wear a bikini on a trip or so people would compliment me on how good I look, all examples of how I looked for external recognition to validate my behaviour.  In my mission statement I show character by articulating that my health is not a number on a scale or a size on a pair of jeans but rather it’s a precious resource that without, all my other dreams fall apart.   Although having a healthy body weight is part of that, it is merely a small piece of how I could be successful in taking care of my health.  I look back and can see in my journals that around the 3 week mark I would make some excuse and my critical path and subsequent weight loss resolutions would go out the window.  Although not articulated in the journal, I know that the change of heart would result after the scale didn’t give me the magic number or I went to get new clothes and could barely get into a size 10 jeans or I wasn’t getting compliments on how great I look.  Because I set the resolutions based on a Personality Ethic, when I didn’t get this external recognition the goal would come crumbling down.   Over the past 8 months I have started walk the walk, and I am proud to say I do live my mission.   What I eat, how I workout, all of it is motivated because I know that I need to invest and protect my health.   Interestingly, as soon as I connected the behavior to my character, the weight came off.   I am fitting into smaller clothes and I am getting daily compliments on how great I look.   My former personal trainer wants me to come back in for a body analysis so I can see how much weight and fat I have lost.  I turned him down because although the results might be interesting, I know that whether I have lost 5% or 20%,  that can’t  measure how effective I have been in changing my behaviour to “protect my health as my most precious resource.”  What matters is that my behaviour supports my character and for the first time I understand that only I can measure the strength of my character.

If there is ever a year where I have had the opportunity to really get to know and understand my character it’s 2009.   As I tried to determine how I would take this new understanding of the role of the Character Ethic in my New Year’s Resolutioning for 2010 I did some research on the tradition of New Year’s resolution itself.

“The tradition of the New Year’s Resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical god of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar….The Romans named the first month of the year after Janus, the god of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He was always depicted with two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back. Thus he could look backward and forward at the same time. At midnight on December 31, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and forward to the new.”[2]

To help inform my process, I interpreted this tradition literally and I opened my 2009 journal to my earliest entry – Jan 3, 09, almost 4 months prior to my diagnosis.  I write;

“Time will past and it’s time I made the most of the present, because the future is always just a day away – too far to hold onto… and the past, well, I let that slip through too quickly, with barely time to hold the present.  Time to really be present in the moment – This moment.”

When I opened my journal back to January I was surprised not to find an extensive fitness plan and extreme weight loss goal.   Although I know that those ideas were top of mind in January I feel that maybe in 2009 I finally realized that I needed to change my perspective from trying to please others to trying to please myself – in a sense shifting my paradigm from a Personality Ethic to a Character Ethic.  I have a huge sense of pride in knowing that even before my cancer diagnosis I understood what a scarce resource time is and that I needed to really value the moments that make up my incredible life.  I reflect back over 2009 and one of the things that brings me the most satisfaction is reviewing the messages I have received from friends, family and strangers that describe how they admire, that even in the face of cancer I have been able to remain positive and that I can stay present on what is important in the here and now.  I have been commended on my ability to use my time wisely to improve my health and how I have made an effort to invest in my relationships by connecting with people through visits, phone calls, and writing.  Although very proud of the strong character I continue to develop, I admit that it is my personality to respond to these compliments with something like “Well it’s easy to have new resolve when you find out you have incurable cancer.”  Giving myself backhanded compliments like this is bad behaviour that I have practiced for years and I know the strong personality ethic I held, made it more comfortable for me to make a joke rather than accept compliments I receive with something like “Thanks, Yeah, I do have a pretty strong character that has allowed me to achieve this goal” or something that allows me to acknowledge my positive behaviour.   Reviewing this entry helped me recognize that I started 2009 with the resolve to let my character rather than my personality shine through.  Although cancer did at times steal the spotlight in 2009 and cancer may help to influence my decisions, the positive and disciplined character I have and continue to develop is not solely attributed to my cancer but rather it is attributed to my strong character ethic.  It may be my personality to modest but I can complement that modesty with a sense of pride that my moment by moment behaviour is what makes me the type of person that people admire.  Learning this character lesson in 2009, I look forward to the new decade, resolving to continue to appreciate each moment and to let my character rather than my personality steal the spotlight.

Journaling is something I am grateful I have done a lot of in 2009.  Consequently I have several sources I can review, to help me understand how I have tried to shift from a personality ethic to a character ethic this year.   I started a new journaling exercise when I began to read Robin Sharma’s[3], Daily Inspirations nightly.   In this book Sharma offers a unique inspiration each day, with monthly themes so that you explore different subjects more fully.   I try to take 10 minutes each night to review the inspiration and then I use the blank space on the page to journal a response.  If an inspiration particularly resonates I flag the page so I can come back and review it later.   I still have about 6 months of entries left to complete but there are quite a few flags (and dogeared pages when I run out of flags), so as I tried to understand my character development in 2009 I thought it appropriate to review the inspirations that most resonated.   October 15^th particularly stood out

“…Too many people spend more time focusing on their weaknesses than developing their strengths.  By concentrating on what they don’t have, they neglect the talents they do have…The greatest people make time to reflect on their core abilities – those special qualities that made them unique – and spend the rest of their lives refining and expanding them.”[4]

My response

“I do need to concentrate on the things I do well and then improve them rather than focusing on what is wrong and focusing all my energy on changing it.” I wrote the word “Coach” on the top of the page and I flagged the page with a note to review the inspiration in the New Year.

I had run out of room on the page for my entry when I wrote “Coach”.  I had thought that a great analogy for Sharma’s point was how a coach selects her athletes to play different positions on a team.  I had the honour of coaching 12 exceptional young men from 2000 – 2003 on a boys elite volleyball team for the K-W Tigers, now K-W Predators Volleyball Club[5].   I remember our first tryouts when the boys (now all in their final years of University) were only 12 – 13 years old.   When they entered the gym my dad (my co-coach) and I put them through the standard volleyball drills to assess their strengths and weaknesses.   Volleyball is a tough sport when you are young as it takes years to develop the type of ball control that older players demonstrate so naturally.  Consequently for these young players their weaknesses largely outnumbered their limited strengths.  Nevertheless, I distinctly remember in our discussions of who would make the team and where they would play, my dad and I focused on the players strengths and some natural gifts (height, shoe size that helped to predict a possible growth spurt upcoming) rather than consider the player for a position because we felt he would be horrible in another.  We would then focus our game plan to highlight these strengths, in some cases combing players strengths in rotations to create a “super player” and we would create practice plans to enhance their individual talents.   Although we would take time to ensure everyone had a strong base level of skills we never expected our middle players to volley as precisely as our setters and conversely our setters never had to develop the blocking speed or stamina that we expected of the middles.  Consequently it meant in certain drills certain players got more time to develop their strengths.  This overall intention was that by enhancing the individual strengths we would minimize our overall team weaknesses and achieve greater success.   Our game plan paid off and in 2003 this team was the 4^th best 16 and under boys team in Eastern Canada.   Our team photo taken at the Championship in Sherbrooke, Quebec sits on my dresser and I consider this team’s success to be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

This approach to coaching is by no means unique, in fact most people would read the above example and think, Yeah that’s pretty common sense.   However, when I read the October 15^th inspiration I flagged the entry because although common in the context of coaching, I wondered why I had never thought about it when I was creating resolutions.  Resolutions are effectively a game plan for the new year and the critical paths I created were effectively my practice plans to prepare me for the game.  I flagged the entry so that when I was ready to “pick my team” by setting my New Year’s resolutions I would be reminded to take a more common sense of approach, and choose to set a game plan that highlight my strengths rather than trying to change my weaknesses.   In all my previous “SMART” resolutions endeavours, never once did I start by addressing what strengths already lay within me and develop a plan that would work to refine them.  I remember how my players would inevitably perform worse when I was throwing my clipboard on the sidelines and how things would get better when I was cheering and providing encouragement.   I wonder how I couldn’t see that starting off the year with a list of criticisms rather than encouraging statements would similarly hinder my ability to achieve my resolutions.  The inspiration reminds me that strength of character is better developed by acknowledging and refining one’s inherent strengths rather than critiquing your weaknesses.   It inspires my new resolve to spend more energy developing my many strengths and my resolve to accept that if I reinvest my energy in this way, my weaknesses will inevitably take care of themselves.

The New Year offers a unique opportunity for reflection and renewal.   For me, I have reflected on how my personality might have in the past impeded my ability to fully develop the character I wanted to personify.   I have reflected on 2009, no doubt the most pivotal year of my life, and recognized I have many strengths to be proud of.   Finally, I have renewed resolve to develop my strength of character by creating my game plan for 2010 – which includes the following resolutions;

1. I resolve to appreciate each of my incredible moments and to let my character rather than my personality steal the spotlight.
2. I resolve to spend more energy on developing my strengths and to have confidence that this will allow my weaknesses take care of themselves.

The history and meaning of creating New Year’s Resolutions varies in different cultures and religions.   Going back and reviewing the history of this tradition has helped me to better understand how this tradition can best serve me.   Like in any research project, you take the sources that most resonate but even those you don’t use, you still gain knowledge from.   In the (brief) review I did of New Years traditions, I don’t think its coincidence that my favourite summation comes from my own Ukrainian heritage.

“(Ukrainian) People think that at night on New Year’s eve the old year with all its troubles leaves us forever and the New Year with all our hopes and expectations knocks at our doors.”[6]

As a new decade comes knocking, I am happy, no proud, that I am celebrating the introduction of the “tens” with a new ritual to creating resolutions that includes reviewing the past to inform the future and to also set my resolutions from an position of internal strength like character rather than position of external recognition that my personality sometimes craves.   I have high expectations for 2010; It will be a year to be present, a year to be a great coach, a year to be proud of my strengths and most importantly a year to look forward with expanding hope that the best is yet to come.

---

[1] Stephen Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Application for Blackberry – Primary and Secondary Greatness

[2] http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-New-Years-Resolutions&id=245213

[3] http://www.robinsharma.com/personal-development.htm

[4] R. Sharma, Daily Inspirations from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari ( Harpercollins Publishers ltd, 2007). Oct 15

[5] http://kwpredators.org/index.html

[6] http://www.foreigndocuments.com/uk_holidays.html