New Year’s Resolutions that Stick
The new year often brings both the excitement for a fresh start and the eagerness of new year’s resolutions. It’s however a common story that these resolutions soon become abandoned. Here’s how to make yours stick.
"Join the gym, eat healthier, sleep earlier.”
How often have you been excited and set new year’s resolutions, only to find that within a few weeks all the initial motivation subsides. Research finds that by February, 80% of new year’s resolutions are forgotten, and only 8% commit to their original resolutions by the end of the year. What gets in the way of our 1st January good intentions and how can we side-step these pitfalls.
Fundamentally, the reason why new year’s resolutions are abandoned is because people focus on the resolutions as a goal in and of itself. It is however more helpful to view resolutions as a process, rather than a goal in isolation. The Stages of Change model (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1983) highlights how behavioural change involves a series of smaller steps that chain up to create the desired goal.
The model highlights how for behavioural changes to stick, it may take time to contemplate and fully appreciate the negative consequences of the target behaviour. This may involve a process of evaluating the pros and cons of change before we are able to fully grasp the significance and commit to the change.
By overlooking how new year’s resolutions is a process, we may fail to prepare properly to the change that we’re committing to. Once we’ve decided to change, preparation is a critical stage to set ourselves up for success for the year ahead. For example, the common resolution of “exercising more” is more likely to be sustained through committing to a regular time to exercise, as well as enlisting a coach or peer for social accountability. New year’s resolutions often fail when we get caught up with over-optimism. Careful planning and honest conversations with ourselves can help us set achievable and specific plans for change. Both the Contemplation and Preparation stages are crucial to set in place weeks to months before 1st January comes around.
Then comes the action stage, where we implement the plans that we had envisaged. Often, the new year excitement launches us right into this phase without more thorough preparation.
It is important that the action phase is not thought of as the final stop. Once the novelty and initial motivation of the Action phase weans, complacency can build. It is crucial that for the behavioural changes to stick, there is continual reviewing of how we are going. Sometimes our situation changes, and reviews help us evaluate what needs to be tweaked to support and maintain our commitment to the resolution that we had in mind. It is noted that research has found that social influence plays a big role in maintaining behavioural changes. It may be that for changes to maintain, we may have to evaluate the peers that we are around.
Old habits can be hard to break, and in many circumstances, the old habits can slowly creep back in. It is easy to give in to failure and throw it all away. To maintain resolutions, it is important to go kindly on yourselves. If there’s a slip up or relapse, forgive yourself and jump back on your path.
By seeing new year’s resolutions as a process rather than as a singular goal, it allows us to more successfully commit to the resolutions that we set for ourselves. If your new year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside, it’s not too late to review and jump back on the horse.
