The Psychology of New Years
We are often terrible at keeping our New Years Resolutions. New research has discovered why most people fail in their New Years Resolutions and give strategies to ensure you don’t end up failing at this in the new year coming up.
Lots of research notes we are terrible at keeping New Years Resolutions, yet so many of us attempt to set these for ourselves. Research out of Cornell and the University of Chicago found that over 50% of New Years Resolutions are health-related, 35% are work-related and 5% were related to social goals, such as spending more time with friends and family. Individuals who participated in the study indicated that enjoyment and importance matters for how successful one will be in sticking with their resolutions in the future. However, researchers found only enjoyment predicted short-term persistence; often we make a mistake in assuming we will stick to a plan and achieve a goal simply because we know it is important. What we should be focused on is how much pleasure we can take from efforts to start new and find new resolutions to work on.
But why are New Years Resolutions so important or necessary? Why not look at ourselves and our goals daily? A study out of the University of Maryland found that we are awful at sticking to resolutions, especially those related to health and fitness. This study highlights that about 1/5 of the population gets enough exercise, yet health is so important to our success.
Rather than setting reminders, or choosing a time to exercise, look at the whole of your day, and find the space where you are most energized to exercise or work on another goal. We’re less likely to follow our goals when trying to do them at less than optimal times (Iso-Ahola, 2017). The strategy is to see these goals as necessity and schedule them, rather than have them compete with leisure time. So, one might alter their environment so that you feel forced to exercise, such as having gym clothes laid out on the couch to avoid watching television or changing the time of day you exercise or spending a mid-day break doing so. Practicing these shifts, you can get to the point where healthy resolutions become positive habits you engage in daily. Habits are stubborn, so once engrained, these positive habits will continue over time.
A successful New Years Resolution is grounded in conscious awareness of habits and choices when they are bad ones. While it may take time to make positive changes, if you persist, conscious decisions will become unconscious healthy habits as you take resolutions and turn them into tangible goals. Additionally, research has shown that immediate rewards, such as enjoyment, predict persistence in maintaining New Years Resolutions, whereas delayed rewards did not. Doing something that is good for you is not likely to become a positively, engrained habit unless it is also something pleasurable that you feel good about. The journey from conscious decisions to unconscious habits through finding pleasure in resolutions leads to successful New Years Resolutions.
Whether you plan to ring in 2020 with a resolution to lose weight, go to the gym more, or stop scrolling social media so often, your determination in creating new habits is what will lead to success.