Using Emotion to Build Sustainable New Year’s Goals

Harnessing the Compounding Effect of Emotion for Lasting Change

Written by: Michael Tighe, PsyD Student

This time of year often invites reflection on who we might become next year if we commit to a new habit. Einstein famously called compound interest the Eighth Wonder of the World, yet the exponential power of this idea alone rarely carries us through the difficulty of sticking with something long enough for real change to take hold. Regardless of the behaviour, it is hard to keep watering soil that looks lifeless, even when we know that meaningful growth may eventually emerge. This challenge becomes especially relevant when we consider our emotional habits and how they compound across our lives.

The classic joke about two young fish swimming along, confused when an older fish asks, “How’s the water, boys?” captures what it can feel like when someone asks how we are actually feeling. To be human is to experience the full range of emotions, yet over time, repeated emotional experiences and the meanings we assign to them begin to form an increasingly consistent and familiar emotional constellation. This constellation shapes how we feel about ourselves, what we assume others think of us, and how we experience the overall state of our lives.

Our modern pace makes it difficult to slow down enough to stay meaningfully connected to our emotions. Still, there is a stark difference between someone who relates to their emotions reactively or avoidantly and someone who tunes into them as an important guide toward a more authentic and fulfilling life. This difference becomes exponential when we consider how emotional experiences, repeated over time, can compound and shape our patterns of living.

For example, one way to understand our relationship with work is to reflect on how long it typically took us to get started on school assignments when we were younger. For those who tended to start early, this may reflect a relatively healthy relationship with fear, where anticipatory anxiety was effectively channelled into productive effort. For those who tend to procrastinate, this pattern of delay and avoidance may reflect a maladaptive relationship with fear, where the pressure of running out of time has to outweigh the fear of failure before getting started. Even when the final outcome is comparable, the emotional experience is not. Relief driven by fear is far less robust or sustainable than the pride that comes from feeling one has genuinely shown up and done their best.

Ironically, it may be easier to self-start things we care about less. While this can feel relieving, allowing us to act without the pressure that might otherwise feel crippling, these efforts rarely bring a sense of pride if the task does not feel meaningful or important to us. With this awareness, the importance of developing our capacity to proactively ride more intimidating waves becomes clearer, as we begin to appreciate how strengthening this muscle contributes to the pride we feel in how we live our lives.

While self-help books are effective at sharing ideas and research that we can use to better ourselves, insight alone rarely creates lasting change. Being supported while experiencing and working through traditionally difficult emotions that have compounded over the years is an entirely different process.

At CMBH, we support you in facing emotions you may have gradually unknowingly learned to avoid. We help you feel supported as you learn to approach these experiences differently. As trained professionals, we support you as you dip your toe in the water, getting used to the temperature, and gradually build your capacity to ride the waves. Over time, this builds tolerance, confidence, and skill. We support you as you develop a capacity to gauge what wave you’re ready for, ride waves independently, and gradually work toward those waves that once felt out of reach, knowing you can always return to us at the shore when the water feels too choppy.

If learning to ride the waves of your emotions is on your New Year’s resolution list this year, we look forward to supporting you in that process, to help you iteratively water that seemingly lifeless soil, to see what kind of life can crack through the surface in a year’s time.