You’ll make the same mistakes over and over again until you learn from them. This is something I discovered in 2014.

If you missed my ‘official’ new year’s post, my 2015 resolution is to embrace the ‘Holy Shit’ moment. To me, embracing these moments means doing things I’m not necessarily comfortable with, but which still align with my values and vision for my life – even in an obscure way.

To me ‘holy shit’ is synonymous with spontaneity and doing/saying/behaving in ways that are surprising… especially to myself. To me, ‘holy shit’ is about doing things differently. ‘Holy shit’ is a personal experience. It comes out before I have a chance to verify my experience with anyone who’s around me. It comes out before I have an opportunity to judge. ‘Holy shit’ is all about embracing how I feel.

There’s an another resolution that I would like to add for 2015

I recently listened to a podcast episode with Keith Ferrazzi on the School of Greatness Podcast. In this episode, Keith talked about how he reviews the ways that he falls short every morning and every night.

I thought that sounded like a pretty dismal way to live your life. But then I really started to think about it.

Maybe this habit is not really about focusing on the negative. Maybe this habit is more about recognizing your default. Because when you’re stressed or under pressure you’ll always resort to your default – what you consistently practice – unless you can start consistently practicing something else.

What do I usually default to? Where are my traps?

On the plane back to Vancouver from Nova Scotia (where I spent Christmas with my family), I came up with a list of 8 traps – 8 ways of thinking or behaving that I consistently default to in my life.

I wanted to share three of them with you:

1. Getting too many books out at the library

This may sound funny, but it’s actually a problem for me. When I’m feeling stressed or under pressure, my safe haven is the library. There’s nothing that I love more than being surrounded by books… but then I fall into a trap. I take too many books home with me. I borrow more books before I have read the books I already have out. They start to stack up around me making me feel more busy, stressed, and out of control.

Default hack: Because I know that I fall into this default to avoid what I should actually be working on, my hack is to set limits on myself.

In 2015, I promise to never have more than 3 books out from the library at one time.

2. Accepting that I’m an inconvenience

This year I made some significant shifts toward saying ‘sorry’ a lot less. I’m finding the courage to take up space, but my default is to shrink back and hide.

This morning I wrote in my journal: “What I have to add to the conversation has value.” As usually happens with writing, it came out before I really knew what I was writing. I loved it so much I wrote it twice. For me, the key word there is “add.” Changing my thinking, and believing that my presence adds rather than diminishes.

Default hack: My hack is going to be an affirmation that I repeat to myself whenever I feel small. Of course that affirmation is: “What I have to add to the conversation has value.”

3. Doing my second priority tasks first

There are a few things – important things – that I quite literally avoided for all of 2014. I looked at my planners. How am I allowing myself to do this? I wondered. Then I noticed there was a flaw in my weekly planner template. There were simply too many slots for items that weren’t actually a priority. Because I love crossing things off, I was spending a lot of time working through these lower-risk activities because they gave me the same immediate reward – I could cross them off.

Default hack: The solution? Take out the noise in my planner. Focus my week by only giving myself the opportunity to cross off the high-priority items (I usually identify three every week).

I’ve also realized that I need to start working to get the three items done immediately; right at the start of the week. My default is to put it off, and then stress and give up when time constraints become unreasonable.

The hack: Do less, do it now, set new goals, repeat. No more repetition of the same goals week after week.

This is hard. Doing this differently is hard and it takes effort. I find it really scary, but the moments I’ve changed/adjusted or leaped have been the moments that led to the most incredible opportunities in my life so far. Here’s what I’ve learned: if you’re feeling comfortable, now is the moment to try something new.

What are your traps? And how are you going to hack your default response this year?