6 Tips for a Strategic and Sorcerous New Year
2018 is coming to a close and even though it is nothing more than a flip of a calendar page – somehow we can’t help but give it meaning. More meaning than it probably should have. I just read Charli Cohen’s excellent piece “Why You’re Supposed to Hate Yourself in January” which punches back at the commercialization of products and services that promise to make a “new you” because its a new year. When I show up at the gym next Wednesday at 8am, I will certainly be expecting double the usual amount of people – a herd that will thin out week after week until population of the weight floor gets back to normal in February.
I tend to look back this time of year rather than forward. Our family empties the gratitude jars and reads the slips of paper that each of us add weekly. I look at my business and start estimating how much I will owe come tax time, when for a few days I will turn into a Republican and pledge to move to Delaware. I look my accomplishments, failures, and wasted time (soooooo much wasted time).
What I don’t do is make resolutions. I refuse to psychically or temporally tie my efforts to thousands of others who are mostly going to fail within a few weeks. I feel so strongly about not making New Years pledges that I would actually advise that if you had something you wanted to start, quit, or change, that you wait a few weeks so you are not doing a New Year thing. How about a Groundhog day resolution instead?
But you’re not gonna take my advice. Some years, even I don’t take my advice.
So if you do make a New Years resolution here are 5 tips to beat the odds.
1. Don’t create a new identity for yourself around your thing. If you wake up on January 1st and say “I am a non-smoker/health-eater/avid runner/non-masturbator” and fooll yourself into believing it, I can guarantee you will fail. Why? Because you didn’t just have a cig, eat a burrit0, sleep in, or buy a pornhub membership – you collapsed your whole damn identity. Instead of being a person with bad habits who can say “well, I fucked up, but I will do better tomorrow” you now have to deal with the fact that you lied to yourself about who you are. Don’t do that.
2. Don’t buy a goddamned thing. Want a new pair of running shoes? Buy them* after you have run for two weeks in whatever kicks you currently have. Want to sign up for the gym? Do it after you have done two weeks of sit-ups with your feet under the couch, push ups on the floor or kitchen counter, and maybe some chin-ups with a cheapo bar from target or wallmart. Signing up for Noom, Weightwatchers, or another program that will eventually cause you to cancel your credit card because they refuse to let you quit? Record everything you eat on a notecard for two weeks. If you can’t do any of that the sneakers, gym membership, and fancy program are not going to do it for you. It’s not about saving money. It’s bout not fooling yourself into thinking you are doing something by setting a goal and buying shit.
3. Be specific about what you want to attain. Not just that you don’t smoke, but how long and how are you weening yourself. Not just that you lose weight but how much, and through what means? What gets measured gets managed.
4. One thing at a time there skippy! If you are losing weight, focus on that. Leave smoking, spending, and fapping for another time. When you start to get serious even one resolution has a lot of moving parts. If you want to lose weight you have to manage not just food and exercise but sleep and the type of entertainment you enjoy.
5. Don’t think. The worth thing you can do is wake up in the morning have have to think about what you are doing. Have your life set up so that you spend the least amount of willpower possible. Control your environment, surround yourself with people who will support your effort, limit access to funds or supplies, whatever it takes. make a habit and an environment that you just roll into easily. I don’t WANT a chicken breast for lunch – but if it’s easier to reach into the fridge and throw one on the grill because I thawed it and seasoned it last night I will probably eat that instead of ordering a cheesesteak.
6. Aim your magic. Despite my pleas for strategic applications of sorcery I still talk to students and clients who do complex, powerful, and awesome rituals that require massive effort but which are not aimed at anything specific. Your three week devotion to Belial, by the book conjuration of Tzadkiel, or massive offering to Ganapati is not going to do squat if you do not put those efforts towards something that can actually effected. Its like firing a weapon: upping the caliber is not the solution to bad aim. Rather than passionately offering to sell your soul to whatever power can make you win the powerball, you would be better off at smaller magics that are tied to efforts you are already making.