New Year's resolutions are often framed as the key to personal and professional growth — yet research shows they rarely lead to lasting change. In this episode, we explore why resolutions create so much pressure to be perfect, how to shift your mindset on achieving goals with dialectical thinking, and 5 tips for approaching habit building with a healthier perspective. You'll learn to focus less on perfectly achieving resolutions and more on embracing the inevitable setbacks that shape your journey to long term goals.

Main Points: CHANGE AFTER RECORDING EPISODE

• Audience question answered: How to take time for vacations, medical leave, or yourself as a freelance musician
• The problem with New Year's resolutions and perfection-based goal setting
• Why growth doesn't only happen at the beginning of the year
• Dialectical thinking and how it applies to classical musicians
• How setbacks shape your success as much as small wins
• Five tips to embrace progress, setbacks, and small strokes to create the big picture
• Creating habits that allow room for progress over perfection, rest, and real life

Mentioned in This Episode:

• The LM Podcast | S1E7. Burn Your Burnout: Building Sustainable Patterns in Your Life
• The LM Podcast | S2E1. Learn to Reflect, Reset, and Realign with Reasonable Goal Setting
• The Musician's 75 Hard Practice Challenge by Gill Derer

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