Many of us toasted in the New Year with sentiments such as “To a better year in 2021.” I have heard myself say it many times. Yet, what I really want to focus on is “what will I do to make 2021 a better year.”
As we approached New Year’s Eve, I found myself very aware of a magical thinking process going on in the world. Many seemed to assume that when the clock struck midnight, life would magically be better. Unfortunately, while I am hopeful for a better year, it is not going to happen by magic. It is a process we need to actively participate in.
This is similar to the magical thinking I sometimes see with clients. They come to therapy wanting to feel better. Yet, they don’t recognize the active role it requires. This is an understandable thought process, yet it is not how therapy or New Year’s Eve works.
On the one hand, magic would be nice. Yet the lack of it also reminds us that we have power to make change if we focus on what we can control rather than what we cannot.
For many people, a lot of what made 2021 a difficult year was out of their control. No one of us was responsible for the pandemic, or the great losses of life, jobs and freedoms it has created. Similarly, many were innocent bystanders to the great political unrest. Even less global issues that we struggled with personally may have been largely outside our control.
Despite our minimal control in creating the problems, as I have learned from DBT, it may not have been our fault, but it is still our responsibility to create the solutions. This responsibility to take an active role in the solution can be both scary and a comfort. We are not all powerful, but we are not helpless either. Rather than getting stuck in what we can’t control, we need to look for the steps we can take towards change.
World events often make me feel helpless. Consider the pandemic. I cannot personally end it and I cannot restore normalcy to my kids or my own life. It is easy to get stuck there. Yet I can control how I react to the situations and how I support my kids. Shifting my focus to the smaller things I can control increases my feelings of competence. That is a huge buffer against depression.
Of course, there are changes I would like to see in 2021 that are on a more individualized level. In 2020 I was focused on trying to repair a relationship by making the other person happy. Yet, I know that another person’s happiness is not something I can control. If I want this year to be better, I need to take an active approach to doing things that make me happy. That’s definitely more of a challenge in a pandemic, yet not impossible!
What would it mean to you to have a better 2021? Get specific. There will be parts you cannot control, yet there will also be action steps you can take to make a better year happen. No magic wand needed.
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