How to increase your chances of success with your New Year’s Resolutions
Does keeping New Year’s Resolutions help you achieve your goals? Naysayers argue, correctly so, that the majority of people do not succeed at keeping their New Year’s Resolutions. The second Friday of January is dubbed Quitter’s Day because that’s the day a large number of people give up on their resolutions, and in fact most people quit entirely by mid-February.
Given these dismal facts, is there any value in making New Year’s Resolutions? While it is true that only less than 10% of resolutions are actually achieved, those who do make resolutions are 10 times more likely to succeed at changing their behaviour than those who don’t make resolutions.
Temporal landmarks, or important events related to the passage of time, like Mondays, the day after a major holiday, a birthday, and indeed the first day of January, offer us a chance to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. There is actual value in starting goals on these days. Research has demonstrated that we are more likely to follow through on goals that begin on one of these days because of the fresh start effect phenomenon — the empowerment and motivation that individuals experience to pursue their goals when they feel their past failures are behind them and their future success is ahead of them.
In This Year I Will, M. J. Ryan writes that the reason New Year’s Resolutions get pushed aside is that we don’t know how to change. However, true and meaningful change is possible. It’s just not easy.
How can we develop new habits, achieve our goals, and make change happen?
The human brain is a creature of habit, and it is lazy; it prefers to do the same thing over and over and to take the easiest, most energy-efficient route, typically that of habits that are already deeply ingrained. Before you begin, keep in mind that it takes time to create new neural pathways for your new habits, with estimates ranging from 3 to 9 months.
I have identified these six elements to increase the chances of success with your New Year’s Resolutions:
- Deeply understand failure and how to face it
- Choose a good resolution
- Put in the preparation
- Persevere
- Be compassionate towards yourself
- Celebrate your successes
1. Deeply understand failure and how to face it
If you have decided to keep a New Year’s Resolution, start by deeply understanding and appreciating failure. I suspect that not understanding and appreciating failure is likely what deters people from setting New Year’s Resolutions in the first place or giving up within the first six weeks.
Failure is defined as proving unsuccessful. The important thing to keep in mind when setting New Year’s Resolutions is to expect failure and not to stop when it inevitably occurs.
You are likely familiar with the names and stories of several famous people who failed greatly before they succeeded. Names that often make these failure-to-success lists include J. K. Rowling, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, and Walt Disney. We can learn two things from knowing that most successful people have a past littered with failures:
1. Failure is inevitable and it almost always has a lesson attached to it.
2. Persistence is part of the formula for success. To see success, failure shouldn’t be the end point.
Oprah Winfrey has been quoted as saying, “Failure is another stepping stone to success.”
For failure to be helpful to you, when confronted by it, you need to figure out the lesson attached to it by asking yourself these questions: What have you learned about yourself? What went wrong? How can you improve going forward? What can you change to increase your chances of success? Take a moment to pause, reflect, and recalibrate. The value of failure lies in what you learn from it.
When you inevitably reach that day when you mess up or give up on your New Year’s Resolutions, or when you find that all the progress you made has gotten reversed, know that just the act of recognizing that you have messed up is progress. You have messed up not because you are weak, but because relapse is an inevitable part of the process of changing. If you have relapsed today (or for several days, weeks, or even months), you can still make another choice tomorrow. It’s not the end of the world. Be compassionate with yourself. Forgive yourself. Be kind to yourself.
Recognize how far you’ve come and what you’ve learned along the way — M. J. Ryan
2. Choose a good resolution
What makes a good New Year’s Resolution? How should you go about choosing one? Can you choose more than one?
The most common resolutions people make include losing weight, eating healthier, exercising more, paying off debts, and saving money.
Step 1: Identify your resolution
Here are some of several different approaches to identifying a resolution.
• Look to the past: Considering that the average person makes the same resolution 10 years in a row and knowing that the lessons in failure are the fuel for success, it makes sense to choose the same resolution as previous years.
• Identify your core values: Your core values will help you focus your resolutions on what is most important to you. A quick google search will reveal many ways of identifying your core values. One helpful method is to identify those things that bother you most or that you are conflicted about. These are likely related to what matters to you.
• Make a list: This activity is a modified version of the one mentioned in the book This Year I Will. Set a timer for five minutes and make a list of all the things you want to accomplish over the next decade. Then identify the time frame each will realistically take. Pick the goals you want the most and that can be accomplished within one year. Now make a list of all the things you will have to do to achieve these goals. Select the ones you are willing to do the hard things for.
Step 2: Tweak the phrasing
Once you have identified your resolution, tweak the phrasing to make it work in your favour.
One of two approaches may help. A common one is the SMART goals framework which involves phrasing the goal in a specific way. For example, instead of “This year I am going to lose weight”, a SMART goal would be, “This year I am going to lose 30 pounds.” My personal and preferred approach is to focus on the process instead of the outcome. This can be particularly helpful for lifestyle-related goals. So instead of “This year I am going to lose 30 pounds”, you may want to make your resolution, “This year I am going to gently incorporate processes that will help me lose weight and get healthier in a sustainable way.”
A note on the number of resolutions you should choose
Some sources advise picking 1 to 3 resolutions. The lower the number, the greater your chances of success since all your efforts and energy will be focused on those 1–3 goals.
Other sources recommend choosing one goal per area of your life. Life areas include career and business, relationships, health and fitness, finances, education, personal development, and spiritual growth.
There certainly is merit in narrowing down your resolutions, but the important thing is to find what works for you. Do what doesn’t stress you out. Take time to imagine what it would look like if you only focused on one goal at the expense of all others for a whole year vs. attempting a few additional goals at the same time. See how you feel during this visualization activity and pick what feels good to you. You may choose to start with one resolution and then add a second one as you get a good flow going with the first. Or you may start with a few different resolutions and decide after a little while that you may need to cut back.
3. Put in the preparation
Preparation is key to maximizing your chances of success with your resolution.
Actions like posting your resolution on your mirror, getting a dot journal or a calendar app, signing up for on-demand workout videos, buying a cardio machine, and making a strict weekly to-do list for yourself won’t help on their own. While all of these are great tools and may be a big part of what will help you be successful with your resolutions, when it comes to preparation, you need to be a bit more thoughtful and go a bit further with your planning.
Choose your approach
The best approach for achieving success with your resolution has probably already been tried by many others. Start by looking at what others have done and what works for most in order to be successful with the resolution you have chosen.
You may have strong emotional reasons for wanting to achieve your goals right away and therefore be susceptible to falling for get-rich-quick schemes and a diet mentality. If it sounds too good to be true, if it promises accomplishment in a miraculous (read: unrealistic) timeframe, it probably isn’t going to work. Be careful not to fall for these types of approaches.
A successful approach will not be punishing, painful, or restrictive. It will not be at the expense of everything else. It will fit into your life and it will incorporate fun as one of the ingredients. Since the neural pathways to bad habits will always be there in your brain, engaging your emotional brain to make your new behaviours easy, fun, and different will help you in creating new neural pathways and sustainable habits.
Once you have researched what works for most others, modify the formula to make it your own. You are a unique individual, with your own considerations and needs. Incorporate these into the approach to make it tailored to you.
When starting a New Year’s Resolution, the tendency is to go fast, intense, and perfect because of being in that initial phase which is full of excitement and optimism. Find a way to make your approach slow, steady, and enjoyable from the beginning.
Modify your environment
Motivation may get you started but your environment is what will keep you going, especially when it gets tough. Identify what may distract from your new goals, and remove or minimize environmental barriers and distractions. Make the environment work in your favour by adding elements that will support and encourage your goals and make it easier to implement your new habits.
Avoid the planning fallacy
The planning fallacy refers to underestimating how long something will take because of the optimism for the future. Some tips for avoiding the planning fallacy include the following:
• Use data from your own experiences in the past (how long did it take you to do something before?) and from others who have been successful with this resolution.
• Set deadlines as close to the present as possible. While it will take you a full year to achieve your resolution, you can set shorter, more immediate goals that will add up to the resolution by December 31st.
• Imagine three scenarios. Most planners plan for and expect the best-case scenario. Imagine as well the worst-case scenario and the most-likely scenario. This will help you arrive at a more balanced timeline.
• Get someone else’s feedback on your timeline.
Identify your lead measures
What is one thing you can do that will guarantee that you will make strides with your resolution?
If your resolution is to make more money from your freelance gig, then getting more clients or higher paying clients will likely be your lead measure. So, your focus should then be on getting those clients.
Lead measures are helpful when you’re feeling overwhelmed by doing too many things to try to achieve your goals. This is when you need to go back to focusing on the basics. Lead measures are about the essential actions that make a big difference when done with consistency.
Plan how to measure your progress
Measuring your progress is a way to guarantee progress in itself. By measuring you can see the trends from week to week and use those to motivate yourself and improve your processes. Measuring also allows you the opportunity to celebrate your successes and progress along the way.
You might make a graph, use a star sticker chart, keep a scoreboard, or take before and after pictures. You can implement monthly and quarterly reviews to reflect on progress and prepare for the upcoming month or quarter. Different goals may have different ways of tracking. Pick what interests you and is appropriate to the goal.
Prepare for failure
Remember that failure is inevitable. In order to bounce back quickly from failure, make contingency plans during your preparation stage. And then make contingency plans for those contingency plans.
Life will throw you curveballs. You will have stressors. What is your tendency in these moments? Do your plans tend to completely fall off track? Look back at how past stressors have impacted your goals and plans. What would have helped you stay on track? What alternatives could you have implemented? If you reflect and make these decisions now, you will be able to switch gears quickly when needed and honour your goals despite the circumstances. Start by making a list of the things that cause you stress and then answer the above questions. A flow chart with what to do in times of unusual stress may be a helpful tool to help you navigate these situations.
4. Persevere
Perseverance is defined as the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.
You may feel like giving up, you may have already given up or temporarily fallen off track, you may find that your efforts have not made a difference as yet, or you may feel burnt out and overwhelmed. Perseverance doesn’t have to mean pushing past the pain. It can mean deciding not to give up on yourself. In order to persevere and make your way towards success, you may need to take a pause, scale back, reflect, and learn. Learn about yourself, your needs, and your patterns. You will likely need to tweak your formula, prepare to restart, take a moment to regroup, and begin again when you are ready.
To not lose heart when faced with starting again for the nth time, remind yourself that you are not in the same place you were when you first started. You now have an abundance of knowledge and experience from your previous attempts to draw from. You now know what derailed you and where you got stuck. Make the adjustments you need to make, and admire yourself for having the strength to start again.
If several months have passed in the year and you’re still where you started, or the year is coming to an end and you haven’t come close achieving your goals, use this time to reflect on your successes, however small, and the lessons learned from your failures and stressors. Don’t look at the end result only (where you are now), but examine the details from your journey. Where did things go well and why? Where did you struggle and what can you do to manage those moments a bit better when you struggle in the future with what you know about yourself now?
Perseverance is not perfection in the face of adversity. It is choosing to try again when you can. Resolutions and the accompanying failures are all about learning from your mistakes and tweaking and re-tweaking until you get better and better at doing them.
5. Be compassionate towards yourself
Self-compassion isn’t self-indulgence, laziness, or making excuses. Self-compassion is a powerful force that has been linked with increased intrinsic motivation to achieve your goals. People who treat themselves with kindness, instead of harshness, are more likely to believe in their ability to improve and to re-engage with their goals. On the other hand, self-criticism is linked with procrastination and stress, neither of which motivate people to continue striving toward a goal.
Self-compassion is what allows you to move forward when you fail. By being compassionate towards yourself you will come understand yourself better, provide yourself with the support you need, and trust yourself more as you continue in your pursuit of your goals.
Practice self-compassion with the following mantras:
I will be kind to myself in my words, my thoughts, and my actions.
I will embrace flexibility.
I will be gentle in my approach.
I will modify my approach to my goals and will tailor them to suit me as an individual.
When there are days, or weeks even, in which I haven’t worked on my goals, I will be okay with that and when I am able, I will regroup and start again.
I will forgive myself.
I will not punish myself through restriction or by being rigid and making myself do things I don’t enjoy.
I will look for activities I enjoy and I will find ways to make them fun.
I will respect sick days and days when I need to rest.
I will respect mental health days and days when I just can’t.
I will celebrate all my accomplishments.
6. Celebrate your successes
Celebrate your successes, all of them, no matter how small. Measuring, self-compassion, and celebration all go hand in hand. Choose how you will celebrate your successes and celebrate each small accomplishment. Doing so will help build momentum. As M. J. Ryan writes in This Year I Will, every behaviour we celebrate grows stronger.
Next Steps
When you are ready, I recommend getting a piece of paper or opening a document on your computer and skimming through the six elements again, while making notes and brainstorming ideas that work for you.
Happy New Year!
