Be

Let yourself BE in 2012.  Please, just let who you are shine through next year.

I don’t want you to make any New Year’s Resolutions aside from this one: “I will allow myself to BE.” By allowing yourself to be, you will allow yourself to become.

That’s it. Its beauty is in its simplicity. When you stop being the one who not only builds but actually (and kind of insanely, when you think about it) guards the roadblocks in your life, you’ll be opening the avenues to a new world.

I know. I don’t usually write about things like this. I am avowedly not in the mold of the self-help gurus you can see at 2am on a bad cable channel. But this is immensely important stuff and I implore you to consider this today, before your airwaves fill with Resolutionmania.

I had a conversation the other night about gyms. You know when gyms are the most full? Right after New Year’s. Know when they empty out? A month later. The reason is simple: when someone sets a personal policy such as “I will go to work out at the gym every day,” and the starting point was a fully sedentary life, it’s a prescription for failure. It’s simply not a resolution that’s going to be met, for a variety of reasons.

What I’m advocating here is permission to just be. If you want to be more healthy, allow yourself to be. These are affirmative choices. It’s not about schedule or routine or the insanity that comes with padlocking pantries and painful deprivation. Just open a door every day on the path to your goal.

So maybe the first thing is to develop a taste for an Americano instead of your usual latte. You think “Wow – I love the coffee flavor and it’s a different thing without the milkiness.” And since you drink two small lattes a day now, you end up saving 500 calories a day which will, just given the math, result in a one-pound weight loss a week. By doing nothing but exploring a new taste. It’s about discovery, not deprivation.

Here’s another simple one: many people tend to shy away from walking during their workday for a simple reason: the shoes they wear to work are very uncomfortable to walk in. We’ve all had new shoes and ended up creating a makeshift band-aid triage unit just so we could walk from the train to our offices.

Well it’s 2012 in a few days. There are tons of great walking shoes disguised as dress shoes, for women as well as men. I can tell you that I used to walk tens of thousands of miles around the world in Ecco Danish dress shoes. They’re not expensive, they look as good as any conservative dress shoe, and it’s like walking in a pair of sneakers. Cole-Haan, in fact, makes an entire line of dress shoes for men and women with Nike Air technology. They’re so comfortable, you’ll find yourself slipping into them on weekends.

The point being, of course, that if you’re comfortable walking, you’re inclined to walk more. It becomes something that you can just do more of rather than a painful chore.

Back to my gym example for a sec – know a major reason why so many people new to a gym quit? It’s the bikes. Seriously. They’re not used to riding, then they sit on stationary bikes (assuming that they’re easier than any of the other cardio machines) and within days they’re in constant pain because of how uncomfortable the seats are. That dull throbbing when they walk turns them off the gym altogether.

“Okay, so we’re feeling somewhat warm and fuzzy now. Aren’t you going to talk about innovation, as you almost always do?”

Yep. Here comes:

Let this attitude carry over to your relationship with ideas.

By far, our biggest obstacle in the realm of innovation is ourselves. I see this every day in my work. We’re afraid to give our ideas the oxygen they need to survive.  We’re scared of failure and, If we’re being open and honest, we’re more scared of success. Too many ideas die well before iteration. We kill them out of fear.

So, following this model, find ways to discover your ideas. Buy a nice notebook or (I prefer these) big artist’s pad and start to write and draw out what you’re thinking. Collaborate. Share your idea with people who can help. Get on my radar if you think that might make sense – I’m happy to talk with you and point you in the right direction. Tell your fear that having a few sets of eyes and ears on your idea is just a way to stretch your creative muscles a bit. It’s not about an endgame, it’s about learning.

Don’t forbid yourself what you used to see as a luxury of time. Your ideas are a part of you and they deserve your attention. No matter how you need to do it, gift yourself that time and focus to play with your ideas. Test their elasticity. See how they fly and, more importantly, in what direction they bounce when they hit a wall.

Play with this idea of letting yourself BE as a resolution substitute. Resolve not to resolve and let 2012 be the best year you’ve ever had.