For me, January has always held a certain type of edge. The promise of a new year and a new start bubbles with pressure. Many Januarys have brought insurmountable business goals, along with the hardest part, the way in which I will get there. Or rather, how I will spend my time.
I joined a January goals group just a few years ago with real trepidation, mostly to appease a friend, ignoring my honed self-knowing. Just a few weeks into the month, I quickly unraveled when I just COULD NOT maintain the new schedule I’d created with that group.
With my sanity in question, there is too much at stake. Today, I treat myself kindly and understand that small daily tweaks revolutionize the years ahead.
However, when I heard Glennon Doyle’s January riff on her We Can Do Hard Things podcast (episode from January 4th), not only did I feel validated in my eschew against resolutions and goal-making in general, I found new clarity.
“It is as if January has this PR agency that all sat around a table and decided that the way that we will brand January is to capitalize on how much people hate themselves,” Glennon says when speaking about the “New Year, New You” tagline.
“It’s a great way to run an economy,” Abby Wambach, Glennon’s wife and Olympian superstar adds.
“The PR for January is really just everybody on earth who’s trying to sell you this shit that will certainly make you a New Year, New You,” says Glennon, adding that her new vibe is “screw you January.”
What was most comforting to hear throughout the episode was that we may not need to change anything at all. It’s revolutionary to think that we may be fine exactly as we are. At this very moment.
And what I hadn’t thought about was Glennon’s explanation that people at their core don’t change. She wasn’t talking about identity. She meant that we don’t change our actions, which possibly stem from our internal core values, just overnight. For example, overnight I am not going to place money as a value over caretaking. My caretaking begins with myself which then extends toward my family, multiplying outward to others — whether that be Veracity’s clients or our team.
So there. To January and its “New Year, New You” PR motto. Drop the campaign. Humanity’s veil is slowly lifting as we discover that we’ve always been fine just the way we are — last January, ten years ago January and most of all, this January. And with that, I close the month out by joining Glennon’s rally cry as she says “screw you, January!” But as a PR person, I offer a flippant middle finger to January’s evil PR firm that clearly doesn’t put caretaking over profits.
