Happy New Year to you all. I’m so grateful for all of you who’ve chosen to follow me and my writing. And some of you are so generous to contribute monthly. You are all my muse. My inspiration to continue to think and feel deeply about the human experience related to pain while synthesizing science and wisdom from diverse sources. I know you have many media channels competing for your attention, so I don’t take it lightly that you’re here reading this. Thank you!
So, after making a cooler of my infamous margaritas for our annual Pozole party on Christmas Eve, and drinking a few too many of them, I decided it was time to make a change (again). Sometimes an elimination helps me hit the rest button on an imbalanced behavior.
I’ve chosen to do “hard resets” on many things over time including sugar, alcohol, grain-based carbs, chocolate, and other non-food-based habits that will remain undisclosed ;). Partly because I can tell when my habits turn unhealthy; and partly because I’m fascinated with the act of behavior change. I like doing hard things and experiencing the challenge of discomfort. Is that weird? As an enneagram 7, sensation seeking (aka dopamine seeking) is a strong part of my personality. Like any personality trait, it’s one that I often appreciate very much while other times struggling to wrangle. So behavior change is a significant feature in my life and a nearly universal requirement for overcoming chronic symptoms—yet another reason I like to “study” it via personal experience.
Chronic symptoms, like pain, are a neon sign pointing toward the fact that we need to grow in some way. Something needs to change in our lives. Often something that’s no longer serving us, but to which we’ve become attached. Habitual, learned, automatic behaviors are driven by subconsciously conditioned thoughts and feelings. If we do too little of something, too much of something, or do something with an unhealthy intention, this can become a problem. Exercise habits, poor eating, porn consumption, conflict avoidance, social isolation, career stagnation, relationship dysfunction, etc. As the saying goes, “Everything in moderation, including moderation”.
To overcome chronic pain, we need to grow. To grow, we need change in the direction of becoming more of who we’re truly meant to be. Unencumbered by our conditioning and the subconscious loops of thought, feeling, and behavior that keep us trapped in a box of our own creation.
So here we are at the start of 2025 poised to make a fresh start and jettison some of the habits that are no longer serving us. Maybe you’ve resolved to lose weight, find a better-paying job, get healthy, exercise more, eat better, or recover from chronic symptoms.
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But as much as we’ve historically been inspired to make resolutions with the best intentions, the reality is that January 1st is not magically different from December 31st. Resolutions create a binary do/do not, pass/fail, better/worse, new/old mindset that’s a setup for the perception of failure. A recipe for a spiral of guilt and shame that creates stress as the early January motivation fades. Some of you might have already bailed a week in! Don’t worry failing fast is the best way to fail. It’s not too late to reset! According to Chat GPT, the research on resolutions shows:
About 35-40% of people make New Year’s resolutions.
Roughly 23% of people quit by the end of the first week. See you’re not alone ;)
However, those who make resolutions are 10 times more likely to achieve their goals than those who don’t.
So, ultimately, New Year's resolutions can work, but they require thoughtful planning, realistic expectations, and a focus on sustainable change.
The reality is that progress in life is not linear and is NECESSARILY full of mistakes, setbacks, course corrections, and self-doubt. No one can realistically become a new person overnight. Nor should they. Change is meant to be a “process” because we learn everything through a journey of repetition; of trial and error. The board game chutes and ladders (or if you’re in the UK snakes and ladders) is my favorite metaphor for how we learn and grow.
So I want to encourage you to keep your resolution, but jettison the GOAL in favor of a thoughtful PROCESS. One that takes down the pressure and urgency. For instance, the best athletes in the world know that consistency beats intensity every time. Turns out the same mindset that leads the best athletic performances can also facilitate your recovery from chronic pain (and applies to any resolution).
A better alternative to a New Year’s resolution might be adopting one, or a few, of the following approaches. These are more flexible, intentional, individualize-able, and sustainable strategies:
1. Set a theme for the year so you have flexibility.
Choose a word or phrase that reflects your overall vision for the year, like "growth," "balance," or "well-being." If recovering from pain is something you’d like to manifest, your word/phrase might connect thematically to the life-growth theme your physical symptoms are pointing you toward. ie: “being kinder to myself,” or “asking for help from others” or “exploring new hobbies”.
2. Establish gradually increasing quarterly goals that allow you to pivot.
Set small, specific targets for the first quarter of the year, then reassess and set new targets for the next quarter. For instance if you’d like to establish a process for eating less sugar you might decide; “I’ll cut back on soda Q1, then processed food Q2.”
If pain or other symptoms have affected your ability to move and be in your body, consider walking a mile each or doing 50 squats a few days/week Q1. Then increase as you’re able to do a higher volume or frequency for Q2. When it comes to returning to movement, there are no rules. So get creative and make it work for you.
3. Stack or pair new behaviors with existing habits
Focus on integrating one small habit at a time by building on existing routines.
ie: “After I brush my teeth, I’ll meditate or focus on my breath for one minute.” Then remove obstacles to make it easier on yourself. ie: keep your phone out of your bedroom so it’s not the first thing you reach for in the morning.
One common pairing tactic I use in pain recovery coaching is to pair a reward or self-care with a new behavior that you find hard, or one that takes a lot of energy to do. Another is to notice when you fall into negativity. You can choose to interrupt that habit by switching to focusing on gratitude. Stacking a new habit on top of an old one to ultimately replace it helps us practice a more flexible nervous system state.
4. Use a progress journal to celebrate wins and notice change over time.
Writing it down makes it real! It also keeps us focused on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that define our journey toward change. ie: “Today I had 50% less catastrophic thoughts about my pain, which reduced my anxiety and led to no doom-scrolling.”
Recovering from symptoms is about small consistent changes over time. Those changes are hard to see. Writing them down daily spotlights the gradual and nuanced shifts that define any real and lasting behavioral change.
5. Consider monthly challenges to keep you motivated and adaptable.
Experiment with a new challenge each month, like practicing gratitude, avoiding sugar, learning a new skill, reacting less to fear, or being more kind to yourself.
Shorter timeframes make it easier to stay motivated and adaptable. I find this keeps me consistent and process-focused allowing me to change tactics while maintaining a solid strategy. ie: In January I’ll learn more about pain science. Then in February, I’ll commit to somatic tracking. This will progress to learning more about my emotions in March. All 3 of these tactics support a larger strategy (a process) for overcoming chronic symptoms.
6. Reflect on your why and set intentions, intentionally.
Setting intentions that align with your values and purpose is powerful. Focus on the why behind your intention and actions. Write them down, say them to yourself and out loud every day, then share them with someone you love and trust who might be an accountability partner.
Recognize there are some positives to living with pain. It protects us in important ways and there can be hard consequences to recovering from pain (less attention from loved ones, having to do things you’d rather not do, etc). So get clear on all the pros (easy to do) and cons (harder to do) so you’re clear on WHY you want to feel better. This important step removes barriers that subconsciously sabotage even the best process.
7. Focus on improving “areas” and break them down into small steps.
Identify areas of your life you’d like to improve (ie: health, relationships, creativity, mindset, mental health) and make small choices throughout the year that align with those areas. Create a short list of specific and individualized changes you can make within that area to stay process focused and remove pressure from the specific goal.
Reflect on how symptoms are a message from your brain that something in your life needs to change. Breaking this larger theme into smaller steps will help focus your energy on doing the hard work of growing. I like the saying “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. If you take smaller steps, gradually you’ll start to see signs that your life is moving in a direction that feels more aligned with your values.
8. Emphasize positively framing the process.
Resolutions framed positively (ie: "Eat more fruits and vegetables") are more effective than those framed negatively (ie: "Stop eating junk food")
Similarly, when it comes to overcoming chronic symptoms, adding a mantra or affirmation that you’re body is safe is more productive than trying to NOT catastrophize. Focusing on spending a little bit MORE time in nature or prioritizing time with friends is more likely to stick than trying to spend LESS time isolated at home or in bed.
9. Social commitment helps. You needn’t go it alone.
Sharing goals with friends or joining a group pursuing similar goals can increase accountability and more consistent success. While ultimately we ideally change and grow for ourselves, sometimes it takes some extrinsic motivation to kick-start the process.
Consider sharing your intention and process with a trusted friend or family member. Let them know that you’re taking on something very challenging for you and ask if they’d be willing to support you consistently across time. Learning with you, calling regularly to check in, problem-solving barriers and setbacks, and cheering you on. Living with pain can feel very lonely. But chronic pain is triggered by relationships and so is ideally healed in relationships.
Finally, (I hinted at this earlier) maybe most importantly, self-compassion is a key ingredient. The most important relationship in life change, growth, and healing chronic symptoms is your relationship with yourself. Studies show that being kind to yourself (rather than being overly critical) leads to greater persistence and consistency. Consider how compassion might sound if you have a setback, change course, start to put pressure on yourself, feel urgent, make a “mistake”, have to “start over”, or revert to negative or black-and-white thinking. How might you counsel a young person or friend in your life who’s struggling with these things? No growth happens without struggle, so it helps to be prepared to be your best ally. This can feel really foreign to many of us and might be a nice stand-alone resolution to try this year. To learn more about this all-important life skill, check out Kristin Neff’s body or work on compassion HERE.
If you’d like more support with your process in the direction of overcoming chronic or recurrent symptoms (pain that comes and goes), and the life change pain necessitates, please join me and a small group of dedicated people looking to feel better and reclaim an active lifestyle. “Unlearning Pain For Athletes” is a 12-week course that includes a weekly lecture and a live component (that I host). As a group, we “do the work” of developing a recovery recipe that works for each individual. After 4 successful cohorts, I’ve reduced the price of this course by over 30% to make the information more accessible and to streamline the process for you. Please check out the landing page HERE for more information. I’m always available to do a discovery call to share more about the course. Text me at 303.717.8351 if you’re interested. We’ll start in mid to late February which, as you now know, is not too late to make 2025 a year of growth and healthy change.
As always, thanks for reading to the end. Sending you and your families love and gratitude and wishing you a fantastic year ahead. We got this.
Great stuff Charlie, i love it!!!!