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Resolutions ABCs
Hello readers. As 2024 comes to a close it seems like a good time to talk about New Year’s Resolutions. I have been a student of the change process for nearly 40 years and when I decided to write the The Practical Guide to Building a Better World I started the outline on January 1. The timeframe worked out and I liked the symbolism.
I laid out my schedule for the year and got it to the publisher a month early. My success this past year was built in many failed resolutions in the past. The resolution articles I have seen this year have been based on SMART goal planning, mostly recommending being realistic and measurable.
This sound advice is easily found and self explanatory so I am taking a different tack. Most folks fail at resolutions because behavior change is hard. We are driven by historical inertia, habit, and static social structures that ensure that today looks a lot like yesterday and tomorrow won’t be much different.
As a student of the change process I recommend developing a plan that involves, small steps, data tracking, and rewards for progress. I also believe the most meaningful change is through developing moral character. Most moral choices are between the easy thing and the right thing.
Being a good person is a great life aspiration but an inadequate goal because it lacks specificity. It would be better to work on what a good person would do or say. I was called out for taking a sharp time with a young person when I was just frustrated in general.
As I look to address this an old school behaviorism technique immediately came to mind – ABC Sheets. Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence tracking are a great way to generate data to fuel a behavior change agenda.
First, just tracking negative behavior reduces its occurrence. Knowing you are going to be accountable brings instant improvement.
Antecedents are the factors that come before the target behavior. Knowing the circumstances can help point to patterns and consequently levers where work can be applied to make change.
For me some reflections identified the fact that we were moving houses, we had just returned from holiday travel, and there was a lot of work to be done to be ready. This underlying situational stress definitely played a role as did some personal dynamics that I’m not going into in this format.
More concretely I was also shouting from another room which means I started out yelling. I also realized I was nursing some resentment. The fact I was also bustling around, thinking about tasks, and drinking coffee which are possible factors that could be significant if I tracked the behavior over time.
Reflecting on the specifics of the behavior I would like at my sharp tone and unkind words out of proportion for what I was yelling about. More details can help understand the behavior and ways to shape it into more helpful and friendly communication.
The Consequence is what comes after. Understanding negative consequences can help us remember not to do certain things. We can also identify hidden rewards from the behavior. If I take a sharp tone and people do what I yell about I get rewarded. It’s hard to stop negative behaviors we use to get what we want.
In this case the consequence was I got checked, I apologized and noted my behavior. I tried, not with total success, to be mindful of my tone through the stressful move. I also was able to give a little advance warning of where I was at emotionally, which some found helpful.
Understanding the costs of our behavior or how it is rewarded by getting our needs met can be helpful to identify ways to change those reward systems to better live out our values and be the best version of ourselves.
The biggest issue with behavior change is folks think they can make a big choice and lots of things will be different. Really our life is made up of many many choices we make everyday. Real change is making more and more of those choices that improve our lives and those we share a life with.
Holiday Letter 2024
What a year it’s been. The New Year found me in San Diego celebrating with my friend Steve from grad school. I always feel like, if I haven’t seen you for a long time when I do we’ll pick up where we left off and we did.
The La Brea Tar Pits have been on my list of things to do since I was a kid and they did not disappoint. I traveled on to the Bay Area where I stayed on another friend’s boat in the Berkeley Marina and also visited friends in Concord.
I was traveling in a Dodge Grand Caravan that had been given to me to support my homelessness work. During this phase of travel I started to work on my book The Practical Guide to Building a Better World. I began with an outline of each chapter and finished that in the first two weeks of the year.
After visiting friends I went back to travel, dispersed camping, hiking, seeing the sights and finding time to write. I had memorable visits to Death Valley and the surrounding area before heading East.
Chapter 1 was written as I more or less drive across highway 40 across Arizona and New Mexico. I stopped at a lot of ancient sites and took a deep dive into Petroglyph National Monument. I stayed a few days in Gallup which I’ve always liked and spent a day in Canyon de Celle which had also been on my list for a long time.
I stayed in more motels then usually because it was fairly cold for van sleeping. Between completing 28 days of stoic philosophical exercises and building in a routine of exercise and writing I accomplished what I wanted to on the trip.
Coming back through Kansas I visited Shae who I’d been talking to during my trip after starting dating before I left Leavenworth for an epic road trip last November. It went well and I returned for a Valentine’s Day date and she and the kids visited me in Columbia as well.
I had left my job to travel and write but I did some homeless outreach work and related case management in Columbia in the Spring for a couple of months with 4-A-Change. My brother John has taken over the business since I left Columbia but as he was between case managers I helped out until he could hire someone and I helped train them.
It was timely as I wrote my chapter on social service delivery doing the work. I had some modest successes and showed I could still do it. I also did training on case management for volunteers with CoMo Mobile Aid and Loaves and Fishes and later for the Flourish Initiative while I was steeped in the local resources.
Mostly though I was struck by the increase in homelessness and the difficulties at finding housing. I also noted a lot more seniors out there. It’s getting tougher and meaner every day with services increasingly strained.
My romance with Shae continued to blossom and we took a romantic weekend to Excelsior Springs. Our spending time together led me to staying over more until in retrospect we were living together.
Adjusting to family life was a nice transition and being a writer is a good lifestyle to relocate for your relationship. I kept on pace with the book and over the summer I found my voice for the book and began telling more stories versus technical details on building positive change.
We started to look for a property to buy but we struck out on finding the right live/work space for her photography studio. We did find a great historic home and we closed on it just before Thanksgiving.
I finished my manuscript and began to edit. A month or more of that and it was off to the publisher. We’re through the copy edit and initial cover design. We should be having presales together shortly after the holidays and should have books in the spring.
We’ve been packing and getting ready to move early in the next year. It’s very exciting.
I also reconnected with some old campaign staff and organizers who were excited about the book. Together we launched a political action committee called the New American Community to support my organizing and to promote localism. We’re claiming July 4th, 2024 as our born on date.
We supported some house candidates with fundraising assistance and built a digital fundraising operation. We have been preparing materials as well as doing some election advertising around the overall disappointing national election. Mostly though we’re building for the long haul.
Our goal is to identify, train, and support an organizer in every county in America, all 3,153 of them. We’re starting with the hard ones first. Our big campaign for 2025 will be to outreach and organize with county parties.
We believe that especially in very Republican areas organizing to win an election every 2 years is not the best strategy. We would like to see county parties organized as community benefit organizations working to meet the needs of their residents whatever that may be.
Think Nationally, Act Locally is our motto so we’re starting in Kansas where we received a promising welcome from the state party. We’re also talking to Missouri leadership and have been well received where we’ve been able to make contact.
Tomorrow Shae and I fly into Detroit to spend the holidays with my family and friends. New Years will find us in our new home celebrating a late Christmas with the boys.
On a personal note I’m down 62 pounds since my 2023 high. After returning to Leavenworth I joined a gym and hired a trainer to work on my posture and gait. I have been discharged from treatment for my liver and my sports medicine doctor who was addressing my knees.
Life is good and I’m excited to see what adventures 2025 brings. The move, the PAC organizing and book tour promise another year of consequence and travel. I hope this year your holidays are safe and bright. I will close with an important message from Batman.
Its not been a great year for blogging…so far
Hello faithful reader,
It’s been a long time since my last post. Sorry to leave you hanging. A lot has happened since my last post and I’ll use my time to try to get you up to speed. I was pretty new on the book writing project when I was still blogging in January. Today the book is being copy edited through my publisher Bread and Roses Press. Its a great feeling of accomplishment to have faced the blank page and been able to bring a concept to completion.
It’s taken a toll on my blogging for sure though, but for everything there is a season. As I turn from writing to editing and then on to marketing and promotion the blog is going to grow in importance. Every long absence from posting brings a commitment to post on the regular moving forward, but I am confident I mean it this time.
When I fell off on blogging I had turned Cookie Monster, the faithful minivan and short term housing vehicle towards point east. I ducked up behind the Sierras to get out of the way of another atmospheric river and ended up heading back to Death Valley. I had planned on camping just outside of the entrance after learning there is no more free campground camping there. I ended up just camping at a roadside park and then making my way into Nevada. After checking out the sites near Beatty I think I realized all the passes east were snow covered did I accept I had go back into Death Valley to get back home.
Once I got back on my journey to the east in a way that I could actually go I made a decision and found myself on 40. The blue highway stuff was too much at this point. I ended up traveling across 40 and mostly staying in hotels. There was a lot to see and I needed to make miles so that’s where I fell off on the blog.
Through my travels I had been talking to someone I was sweet on and dropped in for a visit on my way back through. Visits, turned to romantic weekends away, turned into living together and last week we closed on a house in Leavenworth.
In addition to writing The Practical Guide to Building a Better World I also formed a Federal political action committee called the New American Community to support my national organizing. The NAC’s mission is to identify, support, and train an organizer in every County in America, all 3,153 of them.
We believe in localism, pragmatism, pluralism, and the empowerment of every citizen to understand and improve their community. We believe that County parties can be multi-focal organizing hubs improving the lives of citizens everyday and not just knocking on a few doors every couple of years.
We have been raising money and building infrastructure as well as our work to impact the November elections. You can follow along at https://newamericancommunity.org
My goal for the blog is to be more substantive and idea focused but continue to be fresh and unfiltered. I plan to blog twice a week focusing on change strategies identified in the Practical Guide. These include lifestyle, organizing, politics, policy, the arts, mutual aid, social entrepreneurship, social services, and more.
Thank you faithful readers and new folks to the blog. Please comment, follow, and share when I put up something that grabs you.
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