Have you👻 ghosted 👻your 2025 New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s how to let them go or get them back on track!

Have you👻 ghosted 👻your 2025 New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s how to let them go or get them back on track!

It’s almost the end of February 2025 and do you know where your New Year’s Resolutions are? If you have lost sight of them or ghosted them on purpose, don’t worry- you’re not alone. Only about a small percentage of resolutions are kept, according to recent studies. The good news? You don’t need a new year to start fresh. You just need the right mindset, habits, and approach to either let them go or get back on track. The trick is to figure out which one serves YOU best.

Let Go of Perfection: Let Them…and then Let Me

Mel Robbins is having a moment right now with her recent bestseller, Let Them. This book, which came out in December 2024, is a multi-faceted gem combining multiple theories and teachings about how to relate to others, and most importantly, yourself. While at first blush the title makes the reader think it is about relating to other people, in the end the book is about you and how you relate to the world. I won’t spoil all the details of the book, but it is a fascinating exploration into how the need for control and perfection can distort our best intentions and rob us of the life we are truly meant to live. Robbins teaches us that we can’t control everything—or everyone- and that is actually a very good thing. If you’ve been trying to stick to a rigid plan for your resolutions but life keeps getting in the way, give yourself permission to pivot. Borrowing from meditative practices, Stoicism, and more, the book delves deeply into how in the end, all you can really control is yourself and your reaction to what is happening around you. It is important to remember that resolutions should serve you- and most importantly- help you. They should not make you feel like you are failing or not enough. At this point in the year, it is a good time to reflect on the purpose of your resolutions and decide whether they are worth holding on for the long haul, or whether it is time to ditch them to the side because they don’t serve your true purpose. If you do decide that you want to continue with them, then keep reading about a few strategies that can help with getting back on track and most importantly, helping you be successful in completing them.

Figure out your “Why”

In the Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley review multiple decades of brain research and discuss how the unique patterns of our brain affect how we think, feel and live.  These unique patterns of brain activity end up determining how we react to different life events within six personality dimensions: resilience, outlook, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context and attention. Ultimately, it is these emotions that determine our choices and realities each day. By understanding what can affect or motivate these emotions within ourselves, we are then better prepared in understanding what might be needed to achieve a goal. It can be easy to say “I’m going to exercise more,” but without understanding why you want to do that or how it makes you feel if you do it or don’t do it, you may be ill-prepared when there is a setback. When setting a new goal or deciding on a resolution, it can help to determine your “Why” and then use that to focus your path forward.

Start Small: Habits are the Key 

Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit was a groundbreaking book that focused on how the brain creates habit loops that lead to both our greatest successes and worst challenges. In this book, he emphasizes the habit loop: cue, routine, reward. If you wish to identify what triggers your bad habits and replace them with better ones, take time to review your actions and how you feel when you engage in them. Another point to remember is that willpower is a cornerstone of habits. But it is important to remember that “…willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.” So, if you are trying to create a new habit to reach a goal or resolution, try to do it when you have the most energy. For example, if you are trying to exercise more- it may be best to try the early morning jog instead of the 6 PM cardio class at the gym. By the end of the day, your brain has had to make thousands of decisions and it is exhausted. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day, and that means your willpower is probably depleted as well. So, think about ways to set yourself up for success: if you reach for your phone instead of going for a walk, try leaving your phone in another room and keeping your sneakers by the door. Small changes like this can lead to significant gain when it comes to changing ingrained behaviors. It’s also important to note that once a habit is formed, it cannot be removed- but it can be replaced. Understanding that challenge can help you anticipate setbacks as you move forward. Similarly, James Clear’s bestseller Atomic Habits reminds us that success isn’t about massive changes, it’s about small, consistent improvements over time. For example, if you had set a goal to exercise daily but stopped after a few weeks, don’t give up entirely. Reframing what success is and is not will be the key here. Even if you can only fit in a 10-minute walk- that will work perfectly fine. It is those small incremental wins that help to build up your willpower and courage to continue.

Mindset: How you see the world determines your place in it

In Mindset, Carol Dweck explains that success comes from a growth mindset—the belief that abilities can be developed with effort. The counter to this is that if you have a fixed mindset, then you may never be able to change because that is what your belief system is telling you. If you’ve hit a setback, don’t see it as a failure. Instead, view it as part of the learning process. In his book, You Can’t Teach Vision, legal visionary John Morgan noted the many failures he went through to reach his ultimate successes. Making mistakes or failing is not what matters, it is getting back up and trying again that determines your success. Struggling with your resolutions or goals doesn’t mean you can’t do it; it just means you may need to adjust your strategy and most importantly, be patient with yourself as you move through the process.

The best time to start is Now

It is important to remember that when we set goals or resolutions, we are usually trying to change long term habits. Those habits were not created overnight and unfortunately, they won’t change that quickly either. Winston Churchill famously remarked “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” By framing the narrative around your new goals and resolutions as a path of progress that does not require perfection or happen overnight, it sets your mind with realistic expectations of what can and will happen. You may be able to exercise non-stop for the first 6 weeks and you feel like a huge success. But then work or life or an injury gets in the way. The key is to accept that those interruptions happen, but don’t let them determine your next steps. By returning to your Why, you can remind yourself of why you started this whole process to begin with. Start small, build better habits, adopt a growth mindset, let go of perfection and be kind to yourself. With these shifts, you’ll find that success isn’t about a single resolution or goal—it’s about creating a life you love, one habit at a time.

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Getting ready for the High Beam Proportionality and the new Balancing act in Florida Discovery

Getting ready for the High Beam: Proportionality and the new Balancing act in Florida Discovery

On January 1, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court’s broad civil procedure rule changes went into effect and along with that, the new application of “proportionality” in civil discovery. While those who frequently practice in federal court may be familiar with proportionality, it is a newer concept for litigators who have practiced primarily in Florida state court. The principle of proportionality can play a crucial role in the discovery process, helping to balance the need for information with the burdens of obtaining it. Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.280(c)(1) now incorporates the concept of proportionality, emphasizing that discovery should be both relevant and proportional to the needs of the case.[1] Further, on January 23, 2025, the Florida Supreme Court issued an additional opinion that provided specific direction that Rule 1.280 is “to be construed and applied in accordance with the federal proportionality standard.”[2]  This will be helpful to litigators in Florida as they seek to find the guidelines and definition of what proportionality truly means.

In federal practice, the principle of proportionality in discovery is primarily governed by 28 U.S.C. Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.[3] The 2015 amendments to Rule 26(b) re-emphasized the importance of proportionality by restoring the proportionality factors to their original place in defining the scope of discovery. These factors include the importance of the issues at stake, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.[4]  The rule essentially allows courts to limit discovery requests that are deemed excessive, costly, or irrelevant to the dispute.

As proportionality has been in practice in federal court for several years, there is a broad body of case law on the topic. Numerous cases have interpreted and applied the principle of proportionality in discovery under Rule 26(b). For instance, in  Carr v. State Farm[5], the court outlined the factors that determine proportionality, such as the importance of the issues, the amount in controversy, and the balance between the burden or expense of discovery and its likely benefit. Other cases, such as Fleury v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., discuss unique issues such as application of the APEX doctrine and when discovery might be allowed, while ensuring that it is not overly burdensome or excessive relative to the case’s requirements.[6] These cases collectively underscore the importance of proportionality as a guiding principle in federal civil litigation.

In practice, this means that while litigants are certainly entitled to broad discovery, they cannot demand information that is overly expansive or irrelevant without demonstrating its importance to the case. For Florida litigation, specifically, we can anticipate some challenges to long held discovery concepts in expert discovery, such as whether the expert discovery rubric of what is appropriate to request or produce under the Boecher and Worley cases will continue to hold.[7] Also, discovery into electronic mediums, whether it be a multitude of electronic files, black boxes in vehicles, or social media and metadata on cell phones, will now have to be proportional to the needs of the case.[8] Another area where we may see proportionality debates will be in the area of prior claims and/or medical history in personal injury, premises liability, and product liability cases, to name a few. It will be interesting to see if these new rule changes will either expand or abrogate case law that has been in use for years in Florida trial courts as to some of these issues.

Ultimately, the application of proportionality works to ensure fairness in the discovery process, enabling parties to gather necessary information while avoiding undue burdens or expenses. It could also conceivably make for a clearer path as to whether it is a matter that needs to go to trial or not. Both attorneys and clients must stay mindful of this balance to avoid unnecessary legal battles over discovery disputes. As Florida lawyers adjust to the new rules in place, we can expect there to be a few shuffles as we learn what “balance” in discovery will mean while litigating in the Sunshine State.

[1]Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.280(c)(1) (2025)

[2]In re Amendments to Fla. Rules of Civil Procedure, No. SC2023-0962, (Fla. Jan. 23, 2025)

[3]Fed. R. Civ. P. 26

[4]Fed. R. Civ. P. 26

[5] William Oran Carr v. State Farm, 312 F.R.D. 459 (N.D. Tex. 2015)(application of new Rule 26(b)(1) changes appropriate in pending case and discovery sought was proportional to the needs of the case; involvement of Court in managing discovery);

[6] Fluery v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., No. 20 C 390, US Dist. Ct. ND Illinois, Eastern Div., 2023 (APEX doctrine does not exclude all discovery when needs of the case are evaluated as to proportionality); Eramo v. Rolling Stone LLC, 314 F.R.D. 205, 93 Fed. R. Serv. 3d 987 (W.D. Va. 2016)(analysis of relevance and proportionality of discovery requests).

[7] Worley v. Cent. Fla. YMCA, Inc., 228 So.3d 18 (Fla. 2017); Allstate v. Boecher, 733 So.2d 993 (Fla. 1999).

[8] Roque v Swezy, 390 So.3d 193 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024)(Production of entire cell phone not reasonable without showing of requirement for discovery purposes); Stevens v. Corelogic, Inc., 893 F.3d 648, 899 F.3d 666 (9th Cir. 2018)(motion to compel must include statement as to why the discovery is needed). United States ex rel. Customs Fraud Investigations, Llc. v. Victaulic Co., 839 F.3d 242 (3d Cir. 2016) (discussing intent of changes to 26(b)(1) and in matter with significant discovery, an initial representative sample may be best for determining additional discovery needs); Gondola v. USMD PPM, LLC, 223 F. Supp. 3d 575 (N.D. Tex. 2016)(party seeking discovery, to prevail on a motion to compel, may well need to make its own showing of many or all of the proportionality factors, including the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, and the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, in opposition to the resisting party’s showing).

 

 

 

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