How to Keep Your New Year Resolutions: A Review
By Aletheia Team | Dec. 31
This year is winding down and a new year is on the horizon. It is a time of reflection on this past year and of planning and dreaming for the new year. Which means many of us will be making New Year resolutions.
The majority of Americans make New Year resolutions. And the majority will abandon them by the third week of January. This leads many of us to choose against making resolutions in the first place.
So, how might we give ourselves a fighting chance against the crushing societal narrative of failed resolutions? We looked to the ancient sage of Google to see what others were saying. Surveying the top nine results for “How to make your resolutions last”, we highlighted similar and repeated suggestions and identified seven categories of tips for how to make resolutions last.
The articles that were reviewed for this post were from Gaiam, Very Well Mind, New York Times, LifeHack, Harvard Health Publishing, Inc.com, Forbes, UAB Medicine News, and Self.com.
SMART Goals
The first category, and the one that was by far most represented in some form or another, is SMART goals. SMART is a mnemonic acronym approach to setting goals that was originally proposed in the November 1981 issue of Management Review. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Making goals specific helps us clarify what it is we are trying to achieve. A goal such as “be healthier”, while a lofty aspiration, doesn’t assist us in knowing what or how to reach it. Instead, goals should be specific - I will be healthier by exercising. Even more specific, I will be healthier by regularly running.
Next, we want to make our goals measurable. Running regularly is a more specific goal, but it doesn’t give us any way to measure our progress. To make the goal more measurable, we may say “I will run at least a mile three times a week.” This gives us something concrete to measure our progress against.
The achievability of the goal helps us to assess whether or not we have the current resources we need to accomplish our goal. If my goal is to run at least a mile three times a week, I need to ensure that I have running shoes and clothes, a place to run, the time to commit to running, etc. If I don’t have these things available to me, then I am not going to accomplish the goal I set for myself. I will need to address these resources before I can work toward the goal.
Relevance speaks to how the current goal I am working toward fits into my broader vision and goals for my life. When setting goals, it is helpful to ask yourself why you want to accomplish this specific goal. What are the reasons I am wanting to run at least a mile three times a week? Perhaps to improve my physical health, or because it helps me manage stress. Perhaps I enjoyed running in the past, and am committing to setting aside time to do that again. Or maybe I am training for something that will take more fitness than I currently have. Regardless, if a goal is not relevant to us, we are probably not going to commit to it.
Lastly, time-bound helps to give us a framework for our goal, as well as make the goal less daunting. Even for goals with life-long ends, it can be helpful to make the goal time-bound. For example, people who engage in 12 step communities are usually trying to recover from addiction for the duration of their lives. However, “forever” is a long time and can be discouraging to face. So, when someone is getting sober in AA, they mark their time by recognizing certain milestones: one month, two months, three months, six months, nine months, a year, eighteen months, and multiple years. And all of these goals are met by meeting the primary goal, which is to stay sober “one day at a time”.
Similarly, I may desire to start a running practice that will carry through many years. But it is helpful to have a timeline in mind. Conventional wisdom says it takes at least 30 days to form a new habit. So I may choose to run a mile three times a week for a month. Or, I may give myself milestones as they do in 12 step programs. Or, perhaps, I sign up for a 5k several months out, and commit to running until the race. That doesn’t mean I stop running once the race is complete, but that I have a time-specific goal I am working toward.
Not every article we reviewed mentioned SMART goals specifically, nor did they address each aspect of SMART goals. But almost every article touched on at least one factor of the SMART goal’s approach.
Make A Plan
The next common suggestion was to make a plan. Some articles were more specific, suggesting making a vision board, or outlining each action step to reach the goal. Regardless of the approach you take to planning for your resolution, it is helpful to make a plan.
In planning to reach our goals, it is important to plan for obstacles. Resolutions often fail because we go into them with a sunny optimism about our ability to accomplish the resolution. We have a greater chance of success when we work to anticipate what might get in our way, and to plan for those obstacles.
For instance, if I have chosen to stop drinking for the New Year, it will be important to think through the next several months and where I might get stopped. If I look at the spring and see that I have a superbowl party, a college friend’s wedding, and family coming to visit, it will be important to plan for these events.
It may also be important to have a contingency plan. We rarely do something perfectly. It is almost a cultural cliche to sign up for a gym membership in January, go consistently for two weeks, miss a couple of days and never go back. Rather than double down on this failure, we may be better off planning to miss those days. Part of our plan may be that we allow ourselves a missed day, but never two back-to-back. And if we have multiple days, we plan for how we re-enter our resolution.
Track Your Progress
Next, nearly every article mentioned the importance of tracking your progress. Tracking progress helps to develop concrete milestones towards our goal, provides realistic assessment of progress and provides small boosts of positive reinforcement. Some may find it helpful to track with pen and paper, and there are numerous habit tracking apps available.
Tracking helps to clarify our goals and develop concrete milestones toward those goals. Our initial resolutions may be somewhat vague, such as spending less and saving more money. But if we track our progress daily or weekly, we concretize this goal by looking at how much we are putting away in savings, and how much we spend each day.
Regular tracking also gives us the opportunity to realistically assess how we are doing. If at the end of the week I notice that I spent more than I had planned or that I didn’t have as much to put in savings as I would have liked, I can make the necessary adjustments for the next week. The more frequent we track, the more freedom we have to adjust. If I am only tracking my finances monthly, I may become overwhelmed at the end of the month by how little I actually saved. But if I am tracking my spending daily, I can make small but meaningful adjustments each day.
It also provides a small, regular boost of positive reinforcement. Every successful day is like a mini reward for myself. This is especially helpful for resolutions that are long term or ongoing. While the end goal may seem far away, if I track my progress daily, I get a boost of positive feedback that helps maintain motivation toward the larger goal.
Accountability
Our success towards our goals becomes much more likely when we are able to share our struggles and successes with another person. Accountability can take many forms. It may look like selecting a specific person to share your progress with regularly. This person can provide support and encouragement regularly as you try to meet your goals.
Accountability may take a more social form as well. Finding a support group or a special interest group can help provide social feedback for your goal. And there is no shortage of social media groups dedicated to specific goals and habits that can provide virtual accountability.
Reward Yourself
Behavioral psychology centers around finding ways of developing positive reinforcement for behavioral change. Building in a reward system helps to maintain motivation for our goals. It can be especially helpful to plan ahead for our reward, so that when we are feeling unmotivated we have something to look forward to.
These rewards may or may not be connected to our goal. For example, if my goal is to save money, I may plan for a small but intentional purchase when I hit a certain benchmark in savings. This will help continue to build motivation as I enjoy the product of my effort.
If my goal is to remain sober, however, it is counterproductive to reward myself with a drink. I may instead find something not directly related to my goal. If I make it to ninety days sober, I will take a trip, visit a friend, or plan a nice dinner with family.
Learn from Mistakes
Nearly every article mentions the importance of learning from your mistakes. This helps manage our expectations from the outset - mistakes will be made. If I can keep that expectation in mind, I can help to mitigate the disappointment when mistakes occur. It is not realistic to avoid mistakes entirely. The important thing is to understand what happened that led to the mistake, learn from it, and keep going.
Learning from mistakes also requires that we enter into our resolutions without judgment of ourselves. It can be difficult not to judge ourselves when we mess up our resolutions. But if we are going to be successful overall, we have to be able to make a mistake, learn from it, and keep moving. When we get stuck in a cycle of judgment and self-criticism, we actually sap ourselves of motivation and are more likely to give up.
The Elephant and the Rider
I want to supplement the six suggestions above with my own take on resolutions. In his book The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers the metaphor for our minds of an elephant and a rider.
Our rational, conscious mind is like a rider on an elephant. The rider directs the elephant where to go. They have a destination in mind and a map of how to get there.
The elephant is our imagination. And while the rider is skilled in directing the elephant, if the elephant doesn’t want to go somewhere, it has the power to not go. No amount of skill or knowledge possessed by the rider will make the elephant go if the elephant wants to sit down.
So in order to make the elephant go where the rider wants to go, we have to feed the elephant. We have to motivate the elephant so that both elephant and rider can work together.
Often when we set goals or make resolutions, we do so entirely by the rider. We read books, we make logical decisions, we plan, etc. But if we don’t also include the power of our imagination to reach our goals, it is the equivalent of the rider dismounting and trying to push the elephant. We get tired and quickly give up. So how do we feed the elephant?
We recruit our imagination into the resolution process. When you are working toward a goal, give yourself some time to imagine what completing the goal will look like. If you are working toward a marathon, spend some time intentionally visualizing what it will look like, sound like, and feel like to cross the finish line with family and friends cheering you on. If you are trying to write a book, imagine what the publishing party will be like when the book finally hits the shelves. What will it feel like to open the first box of your newly published book?
Our society privileges the rider over the elephant, but the elephant has the power. Rather than fight against it, use your imagination to help motivate you toward the goal.