No More New Year’s Resolutions

resolutionsWe’re going to make a strong pitch for you to not have to make any more New Year’s Resolutions.

Honestly, why this idea of deciding to make big changes in your life on January 1st has persisted, is one of the mysteries of human mythology. Perhaps it’s because we are such incurable optimists at heart. Or maybe it’s because we often have difficulty understanding how our minds work.

Whatever the reason, it has been our experience over the years that almost nobody is ever really successful with fulfilling New Year’s Resolutions. I cannot recall more than two people in a couple of decades of counseling many, many people, who were able to make this really work. And those two were folks who had an exceptional ability to commit to difficult actions and then follow through on them.

For most of us, New Year’s Resolutions are about getting to do fun stuff now that ordinarily would make us feel guilty, because we’re going to make a big change at some point in the future (a change we more often than not do not end-up making). In other words, masquerading under the guise of a decision to do something hard is permission to relax ordinary controls on behavior. Another tendency with New Year’s Resolutions is to make them about some big, dramatic change, which sets us up for failure because people typically are not able make huge changes all at once. Any significant and enduring change for the better in one’s life almost always involves many smaller and progressive steps.

The fact of the matter is, the literature on how it is that we make big changes is 100% in opposition to the notion of deciding now to do something really big in the future. How you can actually make change is to:
  • decide now that you’re going to make a small change and make that small change right now with an eye towards future additions and expansions to the process.
  • make that first step as easy as possible and one that you can and are willing to do right now
  • wait a couple of weeks and once you’ve really incorporated that change into your life, think about making another, further step on the road towards more change.
So right now we want all of you to forget the notion of New Year’s Resolutions and choose instead this simpler, more supportive, realistic and successful way of making positive change in your life.