What good are the next 60 days?
“2020 is ruined.”
“Let’s just call 2020 a wash and move on.”
“I can’t wait for 2021.”
Thank god for these memes, which have created some of the small moments of joy we’ve known in an objectively terrible year. But as enjoyable as they are, and as appealing as the idea to “just write this year off as a wash” is, I want to offer you a new perspective today on this year — one that will improve your well-being and help you to take back some much-needed control in your life.
When we talk and think about 2020 in this way, we’re essentially calling it a loss: it’s over, throw in the towel, wait out the final minutes of the game. Our brain wants us to view this year as a write-off, and wait for the next one to start afresh, because then you’ll be able to really be the person you want to be.
Our brains are encouraging us to do this because of something called the ‘fresh start effect’, a documented psychological bias wherein we like to wait for a clean slate to start something new. We use New Year’s Day, our birthdays, holidays, and vacations as ‘fresh starts’ to motivate us to pursue our goals. With 2021 so close at hand, it’s especially easy to fall prey to waiting it out for hope and possibility of the fresh start.
The fresh start effect does have some benefits. It helps us to marshal our self-control (especially for hard goals that require lots of it, like losing weight), it helps us to distance ourselves from our past imperfect selves who weren’t previously able to achieve the goal, and it helps us to focus on the big picture and the things that matter most to us.
But you don’t have to wait for January 1, 2021 to use the fresh start effect. Instead, I want to encourage you to start today — November 1, 2020 — and view it as your fresh start, with 60 days remaining in the year.
If you take advantage of this fresh start and begin working towards something that matters to you, you will be taking the raw, tragic, devastating material of this year and shaping it into something positive for yourself. You will be able to look back on this year as not only a time of great pain and suffering, but also as a time when you started doing that thing you really, really wanted to do.
Don’t fall for the easy out, of wanting to just phone in the next 60 days or write the year off as a bad job. Instead, take advantage of the fresh start effect by viewing today as the beginning of a new chapter in the year and in your life.
There’s still the room to make this year better. Sometimes, seeing it visually can be incredibly helpful for showing us those possibilities.
Here’s what’s left for us in 2020 in months:
And in days:
Look at all of that possibility!
To help you with this mindset shift, here are a few thought starters to ponder:
What if 2021 is just like 2020? This is a very real possibility —the world might not return to normal next year, or at all. How will you feel if you spend the next full calendar year putting your dreams off, again?
If you keep doing what you’re doing indefinitely, what will the outcome be? This is one of the questions I use to catch myself in bad behaviors. A few days of unhealthy snacking are no big deal, but if I was to do it forever, I’d have a cholesterol problem. Ask yourself about what behaviors you’re engaging in now and how it will look if you continue to do them (for better or for worse!)
Imagine it is January 1, 2021 and that you’re feeling absolutely incredible about yourself and your life. What can you do now to make that picture become a reality? For example, if your big goal is to get into shape, imagine what 2 months of exercise could do to set you up for feeling that great on the first day of next year.
When you look back on 2020, what would you remember if the year ended today? What activities could you engage in now that would change that memory to be slightly better, to create more positive outcomes for you and for the world?
What’s gone is gone. There is no getting back the last ten months. But there are two months ahead of us that we can reclaim, focusing on what we can control, in order to improve our own well-being and the well-being of others.