In 2023, Focus On Becoming A [Slightly] Better Version Of Your Worst Self.

If you know anything about the stock market, you see a company's stock has ebbs and flows. Good days and bad days. It's this information that traders use to make money. They predict when a stock will rise or fall and bet accordingly. 

When you zoom out of the stock, it will look a lot like the (stock 😁) photo below.

Yes, there are some days when the stock plummets, but over time - if the business is fundamentally strong - it will be much more profitable.

Stocks are a microcosm of the human condition. Our lives go through ebbs and flow like these. We have some fantastic days and moments in our lives and some devastating ones too. Somehow, we've been conditioned to believe it should be a straight slope on an ever-upward trajectory. That it should be all good. Take my life, for instance. In 2022, I:

• I had some family issues with the in-laws (Low)
• I got long Covid that had me down for almost two months and decimated my testosterone levels (Low)
• I did not lose my freelance clients when I was sick. I got more work when I resumed (High)
• I went to Chicago for a few days and enjoyed it (High)
• Hospitalized three weeks before my wedding (Low)
• I got married and honeymooned in Mexico (Very High)
• Felt depressed the following month (Very Low)
• I worked through my emotions and started exercising more (High)
• Got a new high-paying client (High)
• Lost a close friend of the family (Low)
• Celebrated Christmas and the New Year with family (High)

That's not to mention the highs and lows we experience every hour or minute. I'm sure thousands of people will take my 2022 experiences in a heartbeat, as they've had worse. 

What does this have to do with New Year's Resolutions? 

It's tough to carve a massive goal through life filled with these emotional highs and lows. You prep yourself for a 'New Year, New Me' without knowing what you'll encounter daily. 

Our New Year goals are often audacious. We have delusions of grandeur, forgetting we have a life, children, jobs, and environmental obstacles.

When the challenges come, it's easy to go back into survival mode and forget your goals. This could sometimes happen in a matter of days when you have a new fire to put out. 

Does that mean that all New Year's Resolutions are trash? Is all hope lost?

Not really. You have to change your approach.

Learning from the stock market

So back to the stock reference. If you analyze a stock on a website like Yahoo Finance or Barchart, they show you two significant figures:

The stock's 52-week low. Over the year, this is the lowest value of the stock.

The stock's 52-week high. Over the year, this is the highest value of the stock.

Take a company like Coca-Cola, for instance. Their 52-week low in 2022 was $54.01. Three years ago, that 52-week low was $36.27. 

Even a more volatile company like Tesla had a 52-week low of $104.64 in 2022 and $23.37 in 2020.

In other words, their worst now is four times better than three years ago.

What does this mean for you?

First, you must notice that change takes time. You can't suddenly undo years of habits, trauma, or financial challenges by declaring so on December 31st.

Next, you can make significant strides in your life by improving your "52-week low." How can you create a new baseline for yourself? How can you become the best version of your worst self?

It all starts by resetting your floor. By raising your standards slightly, you can make significantly more progress over time than trying to force yourself into changes and developing a yo-yo pattern that will lead to worse habits and bigger failures. 

How to increase your floor  

Your resolutions should always be minor tweaks to increase your floor and make things slightly better than they were before. You're meant to optimize the machine. 

Coca-Cola will not simply change its recipe on December 31st for the New Year. 

That change is unrealistic, has high risk, and cannot be done in a year. 

The recipe already works. 

They try to add things to their business that bring immense value or optimize the worst parts of their business. When things go wrong, these changes are now part of their core identity and should provide value over years. 

So first, categorize your life by the areas that mean the most to you (Health, Wealth, Relationships, etc.). Remember some of the absolute worst moments you had in these areas last year and some of the best. Write them down too. 

Then, find an absolute bare minimum that you can easily do every day for the year:

• Health: Instead of going to the gym 5 days a week, do 10 pushups, 10 squats, and 10 situps.
• Wealth: Instead of saving for a downpayment, transfer $5 into a savings account.
• Wisdom: Instead of reading a book a week, read 3 pages a day.
• Relationships: Instead of going on weekly dates, have a check-in conversation before bed.

When you raise your bare minimum, it compounds over time. It makes the big occasions more enjoyable, and you'll see more progress. And when life gets in the way, new standards are set. Then every year, you raise your standards. 

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Your resolutions should take minimal effort, even on bad days. If you've already begun to slip, go over them again and fix them, so they make sense. The goal is to improve your '52-week low,' not to make a short-term change. At the end of the year, when you zoom out, like that stock graph, you'll notice that you're further ahead than you thought was possible.