January doesn’t always start out gloomy, does it? It’s the only month of the year that has a built in “fresh slate” feel to it. With New Year resolutions, new-year-clean-slate, and all that jazzed-up positive energy, January ought to never be gloomy. Or Gloomuary, as I’ve been calling it lately.
However, a few weeks into the calendar year, and all those shiny new ideas and good intentions are looking a bit tarnished, as is always the way with new things. New habits, new businesses, new plans, new anything, really.
Starting something new is exciting, at least for me. Keeping going when the going gets rough is a whole other prospect, however. Because who really wants to slog past the tarnish when the memory of the shiny new idea is fresh in mind?
Is January too soon for a new habit?
Psychology Today suggests that forming a new habit takes a variable amount of time, not the 21 or 30 days that is often reported.
Healthline, quoting a European study from 2009, says it takes 18-254 days with an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.
Might as well just say “it depends.”
It depends on how big a change you’re making, how much you like the new behavior, how much you want to make the change, how much support you get (or don’t) from friends and family–and dozens of other factors.
The first week or so of January are full of the glossy good intentions we all have to (fix) (improve) (change) (insert your favorite verb related to resolutions) our behaviors or goals and therefore our lives.
By late January? The gloss is gone, the house needs cleaning, and the resolutions / hopes need a revival. Hence the gloomy thoughts, right? Things were supposed to be better (or fixed, or well on their way to a different state of being) by now.
Don’t blame January too much
But in lots of cases, they aren’t that way.
Shoot, if the European study is right, by late January most of us haven’t even reached the average time it takes to change a habit or ingrain a new behavior. Let alone solidify a big change, or a complicated one.
And New Year resolutions are usually all about the big changes, right? We get ambitious. You hardly ever hear someone resolve to clean their closets or wash their car weekly or something that is so highly achievable. Things like that don’t rate resolutions.
Resolutions are the big tools we trot out to renovate our lives when just cleaning up around the edges haven’t done it for us. Or when some new opportunity appears on the horizon, and we need a course correction to take advantage of it.
So even if you aren’t in the Northern Hemisphere, watching winter get a starring role in the weather forecast, you might feel a bit gloomy right about now. Maybe it’s the New Year excitement wearing off. And if you are in Northern US, as I am, you can blame the weather all you want. It’s as good as any other distraction from the frustration of not exhibiting perfection in a new habit or immediately meeting a new goal.
My approach: just admit to the doldrums, and if at all possible, take a step or two to get past them–whatever you might need to polish up your outlook. One of those steps might just be acknowledgement. A paragraph, a journal entry, a poem can all work. And if you’ve been here before, you probably know to expect a poem:
Gloomuary
out of the mood
out of the mode
on the outside looking
in the window to warmth
or on the inside looking
out at the insistent rain
by the long way home
by the wrong turn
with so many fragmented
ideas thoughts memories
with so many fragmented
plans false starts knowing
impotent or pregnant
or only falsely so
and up or down no
sun on the horizon
There it is — my acknowledgement. As gloomy as things sometimes look (I’m watching you, weather forecast) I feel a bit better just admitting what I see & feel. Getting out of my own head is always good step. A bit of gloominess is normal, and it’s not a showstopper for anyone’s life goals.
And the next step? Revisit plans for whatever resolution you might have not perfectly lived up to. After all, January is almost over. February 1 is coming and there’s plenty of time to shore up the resolve. Or get on with the closets. Or whatever it is that needs doing next.
Bye-bye January, see ya next year. And here’s looking forward to seeing you soon, February!
Featured Image by Robert Balog from Pixabay