Why Do New Year's Resolutions Usually Fail?

Fewer than 10 percent of the resolutions people make for the new year are actually carried out. We'll examine the scientific solutions to this problem in two categories: one is the discussion of habits, and the other is the discussion of the "personal story."

People think that changing habits is a very difficult task, but if we proceed scientifically, it really isn't. In our daily lives, we have hundreds of habits, many of which we don't even remember when they were formed. Habits are our conditioned behavioral responses, and to create or change them, we must, in any case, create new habits. And this involves three principles:

1. We must start with small steps. Saying "From now on, I will exercise more" or "I will eat healthier" is too big. Instead, we can say, from now on, I will take the stairs instead of the elevator, or I will add kale to my juice.

2. We should add new habits to existing ones. For example, if you already go to the gym a few times a week, from now on you decide to exercise "more" for 10 minutes, or if you used to go to the kitchen first thing every morning, now you decide to "add" preparing vegetable juice to that routine.

3. For the start, and at least for the first week, we should make the initial steps as simple as possible. For a conditioned response (habit) to be established, it needs at least 3 to 7 days of repetition. At the beginning, the only important thing is that this step is definitely carried out. For reminders, we can use sticky notes and write memos to ourselves.

But the "personal story" part might be more important for creating big, long-term changes. The personal story is the definition we hold in our minds of what kind of person I am and what things are important to me. We make most of our decisions subconsciously, in a way that aligns with that personal story in the back of our minds. To edit this story, we need to take two steps:

1. Write down the existing story realistically, and pay particular attention to which parts of it conflict with the goals we want to set for the new year. For instance, honestly write that in tense situations at home and work, I become overly anxious.

2. Write our desired story. Write the story of a time when we value our life, health, and time.

These steps seem so simple that we doubt they could really have such a profound and effective impact, but research has shown that even performing these "personal story editing" steps just once can bring about all the changes we desire.

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Why Do New Year's Resolutions Usually Fail?

Author: Dr. Susan Weinschenk

Psychologist, Behavioral Scientist, Author, Professor at the University of Wisconsin

Source:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201612/the-science-why-new-years-resolutions-dont-work

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