a newsletter for men who want more

ISSUE 07 |12.27.24

New Year, New You?

I’m not a goal guy. I don’t live for the gains, whether in the gym or elsewhere. To be honest, I’ve had a difficult relationship to goals, mostly because most of the things that really matter in life are hard to quantify. Apart from the bank account or the scale, we rarely get a number to know where we measure up. Yet I’ve also found that the right goals, held in the right way, can help us live with purpose, find healing, and grow into the men we are meant to be.

So how do we find the right goals? Well, this abbreviated issue contains an excellent article on goals by happiness expert Arthur Brooks, but I’ll give you some of my thoughts as well.

1. Take time to look back first. Sometimes we look ahead to what’s missing before we take stock of the past year. I love year end best of lists and I encourage my children to make them too. What was the best taco you had in 2024? What was your favorite trip? What do you think you’ll most remember about the past year? We can take some time to look back and celebrate the things we achieved and the memories we made, but also look for the ways we’ve grown in the past year. If hindsight is 2020, then it makes sense to stop and take a look back.

2. Don’t make it a law. Sometimes our goals become laws that we use to measure our worth. That’s probably the reason we don’t look back to begin with—we don’t want to think about the goals we failed to achieve. With a law-based approach to goals, we end up with one of two options: arrogance or shame. We either feel self-righteous about our efforts and wonder why more people can’t seem to get it together like we did or, more often, we are crushed by our inability to stick to the gym, save more, or finish The Brothers Karamozov. Why do we keep thinking that beating ourselves up is the way to health? What if there’s a better way?

3. Use your imagination. Instead of making your goals law-based, make them grace-based. Tap into your desires. What do you want more of in the next year? What are your desires for your marriage? What kind of friendships do you want next year? What do you want more of as a father? Guilt and shame tend to be terrible long term motivators, but beauty, imagination, and desire can sustain us to make the changes we need, especially if we start small and make incremental moves toward them. We think we need discipline, but what we often need is inspiration, encouragement, and grace. To make lasting changes, we have to believe that we are loved the way we are today, not the way we hope to be by the end of next year. And let’s be honest, it’s going to take us much longer than a year to become a new person—that goal is for the world to come.

So go read Arthur Brooks, spend some time with your family, and don’t worry about those carbs yet. You’re still working on your before picture!

All the best,

Joshua

HUMOR

EMOTIONAL FITNESS

The “Right” Goals, the “Right” Way.

Stop Keeping Score by Arthur Brooks for The Atlantic, 2021.

Best Line: “Want the happiest life? Check the boxes of success and adventure, and do it as early as possible! Then move on to the next set of boxes. She who dies with the most checked boxes wins, right?

Wrong. I don’t mean that accomplishment and ambition are bad, but that they are simply not the drivers of our happiness. By the time many people figure this out on their own, they have spent a lifetime checking things off lists, yet are unhappy and don’t know why.”

Takeaway: We need a more wholistic look at goal setting to achieve well being in 2025. Brooks’ tips: 1. Who has intrinsic characteristics that I admire and want to emulate? 2. What do people most need from me, and how can I provide it? 3. What is my life’s purpose? In short, being others-focused rather than self-focused is the way to greater mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational health.

“Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself, healing is letting the worst version of yourself be loved.”

Kobe Campbell

THE SECOND MOUNTAIN