Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail (and How You Can Change the Pattern)
There are 3 kinds of New Year’s resolutions. Will yours make it to February? Savvy Psychologist Dr. Ellen Hendriksen reveals what type of resolution survives, what fails, and why.
Ellen Hendriksen, PhD
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Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail (and How You Can Change the Pattern)
Four weeks into the new year and you may be a model of New Year’s resolution virtue—breaking in those running shoes, gamely working through Proust or Joyce, sticking to your budget, and giving the evil eye to the candy bowl on the receptionist’s desk. .
But most of us are back on the couch, watching cat videos on YouTube, or using the new treadmill to hang-dry pantyhose.
If you’re among the latter, but want to give your New Year’s resolution another shot, may I suggest some tips for a fail-safe Resolution 2.0?
But first, we need to know what we’re dealing with. We can sort resolutions into 3 categories:
Category #1: Result Resolution, meaning you’re trying to reach a specific goal. Resolutions that fall into this category are aspirations like “Lose 10 pounds,” “Start a retirement fund,” or “Do my gym’s 12-week fitness challenge.” You know you have a Result Resolution if it can be checked off a list when it’s done. These are the easiest to stick to, because you have a specific goal in mind and can measure your progress, which is, in and of itself, motivating.
Category #2: Habit Resolution, which, like practicing yoga or piano, is an ongoing process and never really finishes. There may not be a true end goal, but the satisfaction is in the progression itself. The difficulty in keeping a Habit Resolution is frontloaded because it takes substantial effort and patience to set up a new system, remember to do it, and tweak it until it works. The bright side? Once the habit is changed, it runs itself. For example, how often do you think about brushing your teeth or putting on a seat belt? Right, because these are well-established habits. Once your new habit is integrated into your routine, you can reap the results without much effort or stress. Resolutions from this bucket include “Sleep at least 7 hours a night,” “Go vegetarian,” or “Read more.”
Category #3: Holistic Resolution is a broad, whole-person resolution such as “Be a better person,” “Be happier,” or “Take more risks.” The Holistic Resolution, despite its loftiness, is often the first to be cast aside. The reason lies in its vagueness. A resolution that can’t be defined, much less measured, can’t be achieved.
The challenge with a Cessation Resolution is that it can be difficult to feel motivated and energized about not doing something; plus it’s hard to track the progress of a non-event.
A final, bonus genre is the Cessation Resolution, which is trying to stop doing something. A Cessation Resolution can fall under any of the first three categories. It can be a Result Resolution like “Quit smoking,” a Habit Resolution like “Stop wasting time on Facebook when I’m supposed to be working” (not that any of us actually do that), or a Holistic Resolution like “Stop being cheap.” The challenge with a Cessation Resolution is that it can be difficult to feel motivated and energized about not doing something; plus it’s hard to track the progress of a non-event.
Once you know what sort of resolution you have, here’s how to modify it to maximize your chances of success…..
Try these tips and soon, you’ll be sticking to your resolution like gum in a preschooler’s hair!
1. Be specific, very specific. Transform Holistic Resolutions into Result Resolutions. A 2013 study from the University of Liverpool found that people with clinical depression were more likely to set vague, undefined goals. Having a vague goal made it more difficult to achieve the goal, therefore creating a downward spiral of perceived failure which could reinforce the depression. By contrast, the researchers noted, setting a specific goal could help break the cycle.
Of course, you don’t have to be depressed to reap the rewards of a specific resolution. In a real-life example, a lovely yet lonely patient of mine we’ll call Elizabeth came in with a resolution of “Be more social.” I applauded her idea, and then we worked on transforming her Holistic Resolution into a Result Resolution so she could measure her progress and know if she had achieved her goal. She turned “Be more social” into goals to join the local tennis club, volunteer as a stagehand for a community theater, and organize a reunion of her three best friends from college. Other examples might include transforming “Save money” into “Direct deposit $100 per paycheck into a retirement fund” or “Be a better person” into “Volunteer at the animal shelter every other week.”
2. The Fresh Start Effect. Another way of making it easy to get back on the wagon is to consider not only January 1 as the starting line, but other natural beginnings throughout the year. A brand new study out of Wharton and Harvard Business School suggests that people tend to start (and re-start) goals in relation to meaningful points in time, like New Year’s Day, but also birthdays, holidays, a new semester, and even the beginning of the week. The researchers demonstrated that both Google searches for the term “diet” and actual in-person gym visits all peak at the beginning of the week, month, year, and holidays, then taper off. The researchers named this phenomenon the Fresh Start Effect. So starting your diet on Monday may be cliché, but restarting it every Monday is smart. Give yourself permission to have many starting points this year and your resolution will stand the test of time.
3. Be modest. Small goals are more likely to be achieved, so go easy on yourself. Small changes, done consistently, add up over time. For example, walking for 10 minutes a day seems like nothing, but it adds up to 5 hours of walking over the course of a month. If you have a really big goal, like losing 50 pounds, break it up into mini-goals like losing 5 pounds a month. Looking at it in increments makes it more attainable and less overwhelming. (Plus, do the math, and by the end of the year you may have lost 60.)
4. Allow waves. Especially for a Habit Resolution, beware the mistake of expecting immediate perfection. The aspiring vegetarian could look at her first bacon-induced slip as either a temporary setback or a total failure. Gently framing it as a minor setback makes it easier to get back on the wagon.
5. Tweak it until you’re excited. Particularly for a Cessation or Habit Resolution, if it feels like drudgery, you’re probably not going to do it. There are enough aversive things we make ourselves do, whether it’s floss, eat salads, or scoop the kitty litter. The last thing we need is another task to slog through. But if we look forward to tinkering with our new budget app, going to Zumba with two close friends, or heading to the farmer’s market for the week’s fresh veggies, a virtuous task becomes a pleasure, and, all of a sudden, much more likely.
6. For a Cessation Resolution, reward yourself. Again, it’s hard to get psyched about resisting temptation. To add some incentive, consider rewarding yourself. You could do this in terms of time—giving yourself a small reward every day, or a bigger reward each week, or even a tiny reward every few hours, if you’re tackling something really hard like quitting smoking. Alternatively, if you’re trying to stop purchasing something, like cigarettes or twice-daily Starbucks, set aside the money you’d spend and, when it’s accumulated, spend it on a weekend getaway, a night on the town, or for the truly virtuous, an investment.
To sum up, mix specificity, a pleasant, sustainable system, and a little forgiveness, and you’ll have a bulletproof plan to stick to your resolution. It may be so easy, you won’t even wait until 2015 to tackle your next resolution.
References
Dickson, J.M. & Moberly, N.J. (2013). Reduced specificity of personal goals and explanations for goal attainment in major depression. PlosONE, 8, 1-6.
Dai, H., Milkman, K.L. & Riis, J. The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior (December 24, 2013). The Wharton School Research Paper No. 51. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2204126 or https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2204126
Disclaimer: All content is strictly for informational purposes only. This content does not substitute any medical advice, and does not replace any medical judgment or reasoning by your personal health provider. Please always seek a licensed physician in your area regarding all health related questions.
New Year’s resolution and resolution fail images courtesy of Shutterstock.
About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.