By Harriet Bachner
We are facing a challenging new year, although I have been saying that for each of the past nine years. Do folks still make new year’s resolutions, despite all the strife and stress that we have had over the last decade? Just consider the contentious elections, a pandemic, economic uncertainty, inflation, income inequality, war, violent rhetoric, anticipating effects of Project 2025, the next presidential “administration”, and alienated family and friend relationships. So, do we even think about adding another change as we look to the new year? Then again, maybe a new year’s resolution could distract us from these concerns. Here are some findings about making resolutions involving a lifestyle change and ways to be successful in the process.
One-half of all adults make some type of new year’s resolution and one out of ten manage to keep them for more than a few months. These usually involved some type of lifestyle, habitual behavioral, or relationship change or looking at future self vs. current needs. These are difficult to change for an uncertain outcome. Often people set too many, too significant, or unrealistic goals to attain. The most common of these new year’s goals include: to lose weight, to exercise, to save money, to quit smoking, or some other habitual behavior. There is the “false hope syndrome” related to unrealistic expectations regarding how quickly, the amount of effort and ease, and the consequences of the change that have not been factored into the anticipated outcome. A shift in behavior or relationships is often provoked by some very significant life event that necessitates the change.
Mental and behavioral health professionals have studied the ways that people can be successful in achieving desired goals and behavioral changes. The acronym, SMART, is used to identify these useful components for effecting change: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-frame. Thus, practical, short term, and manageable goals include ways to positively reinforce any action that moves in the direction of goal attainment. Setting one small goal at a time and then moving on to the next builds a repertoire for change. Having a partner to share, encourage, or support the activities involved in the behavior change has been found to be a profound factor for successful change. Self control has been eschewed as problematic in change, although exercising small acts of self control in one area and easing up builds over time the ability to manage behavior and improves control in other aspects of lifestyle behaviors.
Decades of behavioral research has shown that it takes twenty-one days to shift and adjust to a small change and approximately two months to break a habit and even longer to master something new. Malcolm Gladwell found that ten-thousand interactions are necessary in acquiring a skill, a new behavior, or even developing a new friendship.
A compilation of studies on people who successfully enact change have shown that they do some of the following behaviors:
1. Keep a journal
2. Talk to themselves
3. Meditate
4. Read
5. Embrace their fears
6. View failure as a part of movement to success
7. Associate with positive people
8. Set intentions
9. Give thanks
10. Prioritize their time
11. Let go of the small stuff that gets in the way
12. Focus on what they can control
13. Listen rather than command attention
14. View money as a by-product rather than as a goal
15. Have fun and celebrate
16. Have compassion for others and forgive self
17. Refrain from rash decisions
18. Listen to one’s own intuition
Notice that compassion is on this list. Over the past few months, compassion for self and others has been discussed as very critical in facing the fears and challenges anticipated for the new year ahead. Self compassion has been associated with more health promoting behaviors. So, let’s look forward to being kind to ourselves as a pre-requisite to kindness to others as this helps us face our challenges and take action for personal and social change.
