The start of a new year seems like the perfect time to take stock and make some changes – that’s why so many of us feel compelled to make New Year’s Resolutions.
However, research shows that while we often get off to a flying start, by early February almost 50 per cent of people who made resolutions have already broken them and by year’s end that figure rises to 92 per cent!
One reason for this is that change doesn’t just happen because we wish it would. Change is a process with several stages:
1. Not even considering change
2. Considering change
3. Wanting change and committing to it
4. Planning for change
5. Action
6. Maintaining change
New Year’s resolutions assume we can skip the process and jump straight to action – this decreases motivation and increases the risk of ‘failure’.
Then when we do ‘fail’ we criticise ourselves, criticism damages self esteem, demotivates and creates a negative vicious circle of aiming for unrealistic goals, failing to achieve them and self criticism.
The most common New Year’s Resolutions aim to tackle long established habits (smoking, drinking, not exercising, poor money management). Habits are hard to break, doing so requires time, sustained effort and a well thought out plan. Yet New Year’s Resolutions tend to be either abstract – ‘I’m going to loose weight’ or very absolute – ‘I’m going to quit smoking’. Our brains don’t like abstract goals as they are almost impossible to focus on and absolutes are unrealistic.
The beginning of a new year does offer us time to reflect and think about how we might improve things. So forget about New Year’s Resolutions and think about what you’d like to work on changing throughout 2015. Try these top ten tips to maximise your chances of success:
1. Focus on one goal only.
2. Make your goal specific (loose weight -v- loose 10lbs in 90 days.
3. Break your goal down into tiny steps and build on them slowly (quit smoking -v- cut out my after breakfast cigarette, then stop smoking between 10am and 3pm)
4. Acknowledge and reward yourself for successfully completing each small step – don’t wait for the end goal.
5. Get support (friend, family, GP, therapist, self-help group)
6. Focus on the present. What can you do today to work towards your goal?
7. Keep slips, lapses and blips in perspective. They are not ‘failures’ , they are an essential part of the process of change. Learn from them and move on.
8. Take comfort in the fact that will-power is not something we are born with. Just like muscles need to be trained and regularly exercised to make them stronger, so does will-power.
9. Give yourself credit. Change is difficult, don’t beat yourself up when things don’t go according to plan, just get back on track.
10. Remember: change is for life – not just for New Year.
