Is it time to revisit your New Year's Resolution?
In the last edition, we continued exploring the power and strength of rituals and considered the New Year’s resolution as an opportunity: A chance to leverage the power of a time of collective hope and reflection to facilitate positive change in our lives. Today, we consider the challenges of actually keeping these resolutions.
We are not very good at keeping resolutions
One study in the 1980s measured how long New Year’s resolutions were successfully maintained by a sample of 200 people. They found that only 19% of respondents self-reported continued success after a two-year period. As expected, more and more people fell off their self-chosen wagons as time went on, with 77% reporting success at the one-week mark and only 40% reporting success after six months.
Figure: Results from Norcross and Vangarello (1988, p. 129). Only 19% of respondents self-reported successfully maintaining their resolutions after 2 years.
We’ve just about come to that point in January where, for many of us, the gust of novelty and promise of a new year is beginning to wear thin. We’re no longer writing and then having to scribble out ‘2023’ when marking down a date. 2024 is starting to settle in. All those ‘I’ll deal with it in the new year’ tasks are also coming back to roost. And, according to Norcross and Vangarello's findings, at the time of writing, between 34 and 40 percent of people reading this will have abandoned their resolution from the New Year.
That one might be an older study, but it seems unlikely that the odds of success have changed much since. In a more recent study of Australian and UK respondents, for example, the researchers conclude (presumably lamentably):
“Although setting New Year resolutions is a popular activity in many cultures, our findings are consistent with the folk wisdom that people are not particularly good at sticking to them.”
This research explored particular characteristics of resolution-setting to see how different approaches influenced outcomes. The results were perhaps a little unexpected. It found that goal flexibility - that is, being able to adapt our goals as we need to, through slightly adjusting the goal or the strategy employed to get there - may have been positively linked to wellbeing, but surprisingly didn’t predict success in implementing New Year’s resolutions. Similarly, goal tenacity - persistence in the pursuit of a goal - also didn’t predict successful resolution maintenance.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The researchers considered a number of possible reasons why the ‘stickiness’ of New Year's resolutions can sometimes feel more like Teflon. One relevant finding from the study was that a majority of people were re-using old New Year resolutions or similar from their past. The researchers here posit that maybe this is part of why resolutions can be so hard to keep - even if we’re persistent and flexible with our goal. This makes sense; anecdotally, most of us probably have a few common resolutions that become our go-tos time and time again. Maybe we tend to choose that hard thing that we’ve struggled with in the past, and so it remains a challenge when we try again.
Arguably, the resolutions we tend towards usually relate to creating our most ideal self and most value-aligned life. These are positive characteristics, but they’re also likely to be difficult and, I’d argue, often necessitate pushing against the systems we operate in day-to-day. If we think about some of the most common resolutions (often cited as things like losing weight, improving fitness, improving diet, finances, etc.), many are opposed to the lifestyles facilitated by our existing societal systems. Increasing fitness is arguably a lot harder when more of us work from home than ever, limiting the likelihood of incidental exercise. Improving one’s diet surely requires battling against the accessibility issues of healthier foods and often has financial implications. And, getting less screen time today is surely far more difficult than it was 10 or 20 years ago when our personal and professional worlds were not so screen-oriented.
Suffice it all to say: If you’ve found yourself at this point in January and your resolve is starting to shake, you are far from alone.
Reviving lost resolve
Image made with Dall-E
If our goals for the year are starting to head south, how might we rejuvenate the motivation and energy to bring a resolution back to life? Here are a few ideas to consider when revisiting resolutions…
Seek out approach-oriented goals
In a more recent large-scale study from 2020, one finding was that people with approach-oriented goals had a better chance of success than those with avoidance-oriented goals. Approach-oriented goals are exactly what they sound like. The focus is on the positive change we’re working towards rather than what we’re trying to leave behind in our lives. By way of example, an avoidance-oriented goal might be to stop eating junk food, whereas an approach-oriented goal could be to do more healthy meal prepping. An avoidance goal could be to stop putting off important tasks, and an approach-oriented goal could be to increase work performance. Avoidance goals have also been negatively linked to subjective well-being, with one study from the 1990s finding that students who set more avoidance goals experienced lower levels of subjective well-being, and this well-being declined as the semester went on.
Those particular researchers suggest that a simple reframing of goals from avoidance to approach-oriented is probably not enough for sustainable change, and I appreciate that change is far more complex than a language shift. But I’d also argue that it’s an excellent starting point. Re-evaluating our goals with an approach-orientation in mind can prompt us to consider what’s actually important: Who am I becoming through this goal? What are the new positive attributes I will be adding to my identity or life; attributes that will start accumulating from the moment I begin implementing this goal?
Make it easy
When it comes to the question of how specific we should be about our resolutions, there are different perspectives to consider. In one of the earlier-mentioned studies, another posited cause of resolution failure was people’s tendency to define their resolution in a general or vague way rather than being specific about what they actually want to do or achieve. In contrast, in another of the earlier-mentioned studies, the researchers point out that more specific goals might make failure more stark than a general goal. If, for example, my goal is to ‘focus on my studies’, then this is more easily attributable to success compared to specific goals of ‘studying for 10 hours every day’, and ‘only going out for social occasions once a month’, which only generate more chances to crash.
Perhaps a potentially helpful approach provides specificity without extreme pressure by pursuing very minor but specific changes over time. James Clear, author of the excellent book Atomic Habits, provides practical guidance for habit creation and maintenance. He writes about a number of tools, including making it too easy to say no: Fighting low motivation by focusing on a habit that is so easy, it doesn’t need motivation to fulfil it.
I am a huge advocate of this practice. For the last couple of years, I’ve kept a physical habit tracker pinned up on my fridge and marked my daily outcomes. The specific habits will change depending on my focus, but it’s always easy - I basically only ever measure the participation certificate equivalent of success. At the moment, for example, that includes a daily mindfulness practice of at least 5 minutes, 1 hour + on my PhD, and 30+ mins of a workout. In reality, I hope to spend more time on each of these, but a five-minute mindful journaling session easily blows out into a 20-minute one when I’ve gotten into a flow. If I can get to my desk for ‘just an hour’ on my PhD, by the time I hit the hour, I’m usually able to continue on for more. And it’s a compassionate approach; if I’m having an off day and only get the hour, at least I’ve still achieved something. And, if I don’t even get to the hour, I can still feel good about hitting the target more often than not.
Consider setting an open goal
Another emergent approach that research is proving to come with a number of psychological and performance benefits is the concept of open goals: Goals that don’t stipulate a fixed endpoint but rather emphasise making progress from the present state. This process also seems to start with curiosity. “I wonder how many pull-ups I could do at the end of three months”, or “How many different healthy recipes could I make in the next six months?”, or “How many new things could I try this year that take me out of my comfort zone?”, or “How much could I learn about mindfulness in a year?”. The goal then becomes an intent to explore this question, e.g., “to see how much I can learn about mindfulness in a year.”
I love this idea of posing your goal almost like a curious research question that explores your potential rather than defines it from the outset. There’s no quantified milestone that construes success in a high-pressure way, just an interest in developing the area of focus as much as you can. We are now scientists, trying new things, observing the results, and celebrating the process.
Making the process of growth more joyful
If we were to describe the commonalities in the above strategies, I think we could argue that good goals serve us more. Good resolutions will serve us, not just when we get to the end of the year, but from the moment we set the intention and start acting on it. Resolutions shouldn’t make us feel terrible, or ashamed, or like we have to change who we are. Instead, they should lift us up and excite us about the possibilities of our future selves, and bring us positive gratitude for the effort and progress of our current selves.
And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dream big. In fact, recent research found a link between childhood aspirations and future achievements, so that old adage of ‘aiming for the stars to reach the moon’ is probably pretty true. Big goals are great. Rather, I see here a theme of making this whole process more joyful. I think we should seek to facilitate a journey of growth centred in joy, self-compassion, appreciation, celebration and fun, rather than one of overwhelm, fear, or guilt. Change is always hard, but it doesn’t have to be fundamentally rooted in negativity.
A small, meaningful action: Revisiting resolutions
Whether you’re right on track or you’re desperately gripping the back of the wagon by the fingertips at this point, it’s a great time to consciously revisit the resolutions you set a couple of weeks ago. Or, perhaps you haven’t thought about yearly intentions yet, and now you can take the opportunity.
Consider undertaking a reflective journalling session focused on yearly intentions. This might emerge as a moment of affirmation or one of complete reset. Either way, it’s about appreciating where you’ve gotten to so far and, with intention but without judgment, mapping some ways forward. Here are some prompts that might be helpful:
What resolutions or intentions did you set for the year? How are they going so far?
What are some tiny wins you’ve experienced so far in relation to your resolution/s?
What are some ‘aha’ moments that have emerged about yourself, or anything else?
If you had to rewrite your goals/resolutions and approaches in a way that works better for you, how might you do that? (consider e.g. approach vs. avoidant, making them easier to say ‘yes’ to, open goals, embedding more joy)
How would you sum up your yearly intentions in one to three words?
Who are you becoming through these goals or intentions? What are the new positive attributes you will be adding to your identity or life; attributes that will start accumulating from the moment you begin implementation?
What kind of support have you got around? What opportunities are there to create an environment more conducive to your success?
What’s one immediate next step that you can take to help on your journey?