Ethics Reboot: 21 days of better habits for a better life

Many of us know how easy it is for our New Year resolutions to fail. And that’s ok, we’re only human. But how do we bring about change, if we want to?

For many people, the start of a new year is a time to make resolutions. For others, it’s a time to reflect on how to make the world a little better by becoming a little better as a person. 

Unfortunately, for the majority of people, our commitment to change often fails and the gap between our intentions and actions can feel insurmountable. The Ethics Centre’s Director of Innovation and Education, John Neil says this is because, well, we’re human beings. He offers at least three factors behind this:    

1. We overestimate the power of ‘willpower.’ Often linked to adjacent concepts like resilience and impulse inhibition, the long-standing belief in psychology is that willpower is a finite resource and people have varying reservoirs of it to draw on. The belief was that by bolstering our willpower we’re better able to attain our goals and those that don’t achieve their goals lack willpower. Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that. Our ability to maintain choices and attain goals is as much about situational context, genetics, and socioeconomic standing as it is about individual psychological traits.

2. As a result, any significant behaviour change requires long-standing practice, environmental changes and thoughtfully designed behavioural cues to create pathways of reinforcement to form new habits. In short, even the simplest resolutions require habitual practice.

3. Most resolutions are goal-focused – stop smoking, lose weight – so they take on instrumental importance, meaning they focus exclusively on achieving an end state or outcome. With the high difficulty in achieving these outcomes resolutions can become self-defeating – the end becomes the goal rather than a focus on the motivating reason that inspired the goal.  

That’s not to say that resolutions are a bad thing. We are hard-wired to demarcate life into phases. Birthdays, seasons, events, and the change of year are all relatively arbitrary events but are full of symbolic significance. They are moments that matter because we invest these occasions with meaning. They can provide a much-needed pause in the busy and difficult aspects of life to reflect and reassess what’s important to us. 

So, how can we reset to focus on what we want more of in our lives?  

The Ethics Centre has developed Ethics Reboot, a new, free, online 21-day challenge designed to create better habits.  

Rather than feeling the pressure to write down a long list of goals, that have little chance of sticking, the course asks you to think instead about the qualities you’d like to cultivate. What qualities for you express the best aspects of a life well lived? Which of those would you choose to have more of in your life? 

Some philosophers refer to these qualities as virtues – those behaviours, skills or mindsets that are worthy to be regarded as features of living a good life. Wisdom, justice, and courage were on Aristotle’s shortlist.  

Rather than setting goals like reading more books or spending less time on my phone – think instead of the quality you are calling more of into your world – like being curious, courageous or compassionate.

Ethics Reboot provides you with one new quality or virtue to focus on each day for 21 days. Each daily challenge will give you guidance, motivation and inspiration to bring that quality into your every day.  

In the midst of busy lives – and an increasingly tumultuous world – the challenge of the course is to carve out a few minutes each day to learn something new, put it into practice and reflect on it’s impact in your life. The result? Creating a new habit of daily self-reflection that might just help kick-start new ways of thinking, being and doing life that little bit better.  

The course kicks off from when you sign up and lasts for 21 days – just enough time to develop some fresh new habits. You can join by signing up on our website.  

Each day you’ll receive: 

• A daily email explainer introducing you to a new virtue 
• A guided activity to help practice what you’ve learnt  
• A reflection exercise to build your ethical muscle and integrate the virtue into your everyday 

In a time where many aspects of life can feel tough, focus on what you can control. And you might just see that resolution through. 

Take our 21-day challenge and sign up for Ethics Reboot here.