New Year’s resolutions are much like the fireworks finale on the Fourth of July: they shine brightly in people’s minds leading up to New Year’s Day then fade from the consciousness just as quickly. The self-righteous declarations to lose weight, quit smoking or save more money often dissolve like the morning mist before the first week of the year is over. According to some estimates, only about 15 percent of the populace develops the resolve to follow through on their resolutions to their fruition.
It’s not like we humans haven’t had lot a practice at this annual ritual. New Year’s resolutions began way back in 4,000 B.C., says Stephen Kraus, the author of Psychological Foundations of Success: A Harvard-trained Scientist Separates the Science of Success from Self Help Snail Oil. Krause says ancient Babylonians started off the year by satisfying their debts and returning borrowed goods. Also, 2,000 years later, the Romans had a practice of inventorying the preceding year and promising to raise their game in the upcoming year. So why haven’t we had more success following through on our New Year’s resolutions? Psychologists have come up with seven concrete ways to become successful at New Year’s resolutions. – terry shropshire.
1. Develop a Concrete Plan: In order to graduate your ideals from simple wishes to bona fide resolutions, you have to create a workable action plan with short and long-term goals. University of Scranton psychologist Dr. John Norcross, a New Year’s resolution expert, cautions against vague plans. Simply saying you want to lose weight is much different than developing a weight-loss strategy that includes joining a gym, writing out a time-table and eliminating harmful fats and sweets from your diet. You must have a plan. “Launching a New Year’s resolution with no planning is like jumping out of an airplane and then trying to sew your parachute on the way down,” Norcross says.
2. Tell confidantes of your plans: It also helps if you have someone to augment your efforts by holding you accountable to your goals. Norcross points to numerous studies that state how getting other people attached to your goals greatly increase your success. It could be a friend who walks or jogs with you regularly, a family member who ensures that you cut down on your smoking or a loved one who helps monitor your weekly and monthly expenditures to help you save the predetermined amount of money.
3. Believe that you can do it: “Whether you believe that you can or you cannot, you are right,” said deified industrialist Henry Ford. Start out on the campaign to your resolution believing that you will succeed. Norcross says this will provide you with sufficient resolve to persevere when the inevitable challenges and setbacks occur.
4. Reward Your Success Regularly: Alan Marlatt, an addiction researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, says you should develop mini goals en route to your larger overall goal, and celebrate your success as regular intervals. For example, if you go a few days without smoking or drinking, then buy yourself an outfit or a good book. Marlatt says personal rewards for incremental success conditions you to expect a good outcome and “that optimism will help keep you going when things get tough”.
5. Embrace Discomfort: Understand there is a price to pay to accomplish anything in life. Change can be challenging and even difficult, but if it were easy then you would have already implemented the behavioral modification. “You won’t make any real progress unless you’re willing to be temporarily uncomfortable,” says Dr. Robert Leahy, author of the Worry Cure. The professor of psychology at Cornell University also says that you will often learn that what you believed would be excruciatingly hard is not nearly as painful as you originally thought.
6. Avoid problem areas: If you are trying to quit drinking, then obviously it doesn’t make much sense to hang out at the neighborhood bar everyday. If at all possible, detour around areas or places that are connected to your weakness.
7. Develop ‘Never Quit’ Mentality: Dr. Marlatt warns against the quick fix or believing that change will come quickly. Go into the resolution completely aware that setbacks may occur. He says to look at failed attempts as steps forward toward your goals. Marlatt says just 40 percent of people quit smoking on the first try, but another 20 percent succeed after the sixth attempt. The moral of the story? Never give up. Your persistence will be rewarded.
