Key Takeaways:
- Making New Year’s resolutions, and then soon falling short on them, is a very human practice. (One that dates back millennia, in fact.)
- The human brain craves habit—and making new, healthier habits is hard.
- Prioritizing positive, proactive, “approach-oriented goals” is just one way to potentially set yourself up for success.
So many of us start each January 1 with such high hopes. This will be the year we stick to our New Year’s resolutions, we tell ourselves. The weight loss goals, the exercise regimen, the pledge to get organized or learn a new skill—regardless of the objectives, the motivation to see them through is at its strongest when the calendar flips.
Of course, quite often that “eyes on the prize” attitude sours in short order—leaving us with a sense of disappointment that we got off track so quickly.
With that in mind, consider focusing on what is commonly the hardest part of resolutions—keeping them well into the new year and beyond. The good news: There are plenty of strategies that can potentially help you do a better job at identifying the right goals for you, framing them so you pursue them consistently, and ultimately generating the outcomes you most want for yourself.
Why it’s so tough
The history of New Year’s resolutions is a long one. The ancient Babylonians are said to have started the practice more than 4,000 years ago. They would make promises to the gods when crops were planted at the start of the new year. If they kept their word, those gods would smile on them during the year to come. If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favor.
Put another way, people have been making New Year’s resolutions—and often failing to keep them—for four millennia. So maybe don’t beat yourself up too much if you find yourself falling short of your goals by the time February starts. Certainly many of us find it a whole lot easier to make resolutions than to execute on them.
The good news: If that describes you, it’s probably not the case that you have some great moral failing. Turns out there’s some science behind humans’ pattern of losing interest in New Year’s resolutions.
For example, one longitudinal study of “resolvers” published in the National Library of Medicine tracked 200 people who set out to tackle a wide array of milestones in the New Year, with goals both concrete (quitting smoking) and abstract (improving romantic relationships). It found that by a week into January, 77% of study participants had kept up with their resolutions. But that number decreased to 55% by February 1. And it lowered still further to 43% after three months, 40% after six months and just 19% after two years.
The challenge is that creating a new course of action and sticking with it involves changing behaviors—whether building new and healthier habits or jettisoning old, unhealthy ones. And the human brain is a creature of habit, craving the familiar and treading well-worn paths of comforting actions (or inaction, as the case may be). Don’t be surprised if it takes around three weeks to start a new habit.
But the good news is that experts have shown that healthy new habits can be cultivated with repetition and mindfulness, reinforcing beneficial behaviors by cultivating a positive and rewarding feedback loop. “Habits aren’t just there, but you get them by repetition and reinforcement,” Dr. Nicole Calakos, professor of neurology and neurobiology at Duke, told PBS North Carolina. “The repetition part is obvious, because a habit means regularly doing something, and the more you do it, the conditions are ripe that will make you prone to have a habit. The second is reinforcement. In other words, is the outcome good? Does it help you get about your business? Is it rewarding?”
Framing your goals
Science doesn’t just tell us that it’s a common occurrence to fall short on our resolutions. It also offers tried-and-tested ways to stay on track and achieve success, cultivating better habits and lasting change.
Ultimately, it’s all in how you frame it.
In one peer-reviewed study from 2020, Swedish researchers studied the success rates of various New Year’s resolutions. Their conclusion: “Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals.”
Essentially, that means you’re a lot more likely to find staying power with a resolution that you can build toward, iteratively and proactively, and that gives you positive motivation along the way. That’s a much better way to frame your goal than a deprivation-based system (“I must give up bad habit X!”) that only denies you the things you’re used to craving.
A one-year follow-up on the Swedish researchers’ study cohort showed that more than half (55%) of the subjects thought they’d been successful in sustaining their resolutions. And those who embraced the approach-oriented model were significantly more successful than those who’d tried to simply avoid bad habits: 58.9% versus 47.1%.
Also try to set approach-oriented goals that you can measure—key performance indicators, if you will. Choosing specific numeric targets for your resolutions and then working proactively toward them can be a valuable and rewarding way to rewire your brain with healthy new habits.
Example: Strapping on the Fitbit and then pledging to walk an extra 5,000 steps a day or jog seven miles per week can be much better than just saying “exercise more.” It’s motivating because it gives you a specific goal to work toward within a specific time frame.
That then allows you to track your progress—giving you warm feelings of satisfaction when you meet or exceed that total, and encouraging you to try harder the next day when you fall short of your goal.
Action steps
Armed with the understanding that achievement is a much better approach to resolution-keeping than avoidance, here are some fine-tuned tips to help you take the goals of January and carry them right through the calendar year.
- Keep your goals limited and reasonable. Keep your resolutions to a handful of two or three achievable goals. Don’t try to boil the ocean!
- Be specific. As noted, having numeric benchmarks to work toward and track is an immense motivator. It’s not just about “spending less.” It’s about making a budget and trimming monthly expenditures by X amount. It’s not about “eating better,” but rather cooking a specific number of healthy dinner recipes at home each week or only getting takeout on weekends.
- Plan it out. By looking strategically at your goals and then being tactical about divvying them up into discrete and doable milestones, you can set yourself on a good path to success and avoid feeling overwhelmed with something that seems abstract and unattainable.
- Keep an eye on KPIs. Tracking your progress toward your goal is critical—and it’s easier than ever with any number of smartphone apps that can help you make notes, keep a journal or log specific accomplishments along the way. When you’ve notched a specific win, however small it might be, consider a small treat to celebrate.
- Make yourself accountable (but not too much). The goal of a New Year’s resolution is to build a better you. It defeats the purpose of the whole endeavor if you beat yourself up every time you slip up or fall behind on your progress. Holding yourself to account is healthy—but so is being flexible and shrugging off small setbacks.
- Slow and steady wins the race. “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is a cliché—but that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. Consistent, day-in, day-out repetition of productive and healthy behaviors is what will make your resolutions stick. With iteration, success can have a tendency to build on itself.
- But also don’t be afraid to change course. If, a month or two into the new year, you decide your resolution was too ambitious or too broad, it’s okay to trim sails and try another tack. Even more modest progress toward a goal is better than abandoning your plan entirely.
Conclusion
Of course, you don’t have to make New Year’s resolutions at all. It’s good to want to improve yourself. But the arbitrary date of January 1—and the self-imposed pressure to comply with the goals you set for yourself—may not be worth the agita when all is said and done.
Many people have decided that the idea is just silly when they know, from experience, the failure rate. One survey found that most people opt to skip the trend entirely—with only four in ten people making resolutions, and of those, barely more than 15% keeping all of them.
If you do decide to go all in for a transformative, new-year, new-you start to 2025, try to take it easy. Stay motivated, track progress toward your goals, reward small victories and forgive small slipups. But ultimately—no matter whether you follow through on your goals in splendid fashion or fall short of them spectacularly—remember to be proud of your efforts.
VFO Inner Circle Special Report
By John J. Bowen Jr.
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