Creating Sustainable Resolutions
According to research, about 80% or more of New Year’s Resolutions fail. And yet, every year most of us repeat the process, hoping that we will accomplish this year what we couldn’t last year. As vaguely depressing as it can seem to repeat different versions of the same cycle over and over again, there is something very sweet about it to me. We want to feel inspired and believe that change is possible and that there is something better for us than the challenges and traps we’ve suffered from before. And I think this is the right way to look at things. While many people will claim that we can’t really change, I’m certain we can. And it is useful to hope and believe in something better, and to set intentions for ourselves as a starting place. The issue is that after the intention we’re just going about the next part slightly wrong. How do we make New Year’s Resolutions actually stick?
For context, we first have to consider that New Year’s Resolutions are behavioral. For example, we want to exercise three times a week when we previously only exercised sporadically. Seems simple enough to just decide to make that change. In actuality, changing behavior is much more complicated than that, and it tends to arise out of identity. What I mean is that you will tend to take action in ways that reinforce how you want to feel about yourself and attempt to avoid acting in ways that don’t.
The problem is that most of us have multiple, often competing ways that we want to feel about ourselves. Changes we want but cannot put into action are often illustrative of these types of binds. For example, on one side we may want to feel fit and strong — which requires, for most people, some kind of routine and discipline — but we may also want to feel like the type of person who can do whatever the f*#k we want when we want to do it, and have a sense of freedom. Having competing identities is usually, if not always, the case when we are trying to forge a new habit but have not been able to.
At the beginning of the year, the demarkation of a fresh start allows us to feel a sense of hope and possibility. “This time it’s going to work!” In the previous example, perhaps we think that we could finally be a disciplined and strong person. But as we’re changing our behavior according to our New Year’s Resolutions, two or more “parts” of us are competing in the background, which is why this process is so difficult to sustain. In this kind of inner competition, what will tend to dominate after the dust settles is the “bad” habit we already have — and we may even rebound and lean on it maybe even more significantly than we have in the past — or we’ll say f*#k it and opt out all together, not caring in any notable way about our fitness or our freedom.
So when making resolutions, we have to start by understanding what identity is linked to the habit we are trying to change and what is linked to the one we’re trying to create. Instead of focusing on the simple behavioral change, you should reflect genuinely on how you want to feel about yourself, and be honest that it probably isn’t only the “good” way; it’s likely that it’s not simple and will be a mixed bag.
When you do this, you have to let it be okay if actually more of you wants to stay where you are than do something different. This is your starting place. But if and when you do decide you want to give a different “part” of you a more primary experience — for example see what it’s like to go for that fit and strong person — you have to keep that identity at the forefront of the goal instead of the behavior itself.
When we think about our new habits, we have to understand it’ll be a guaranteed journey of success and failure from the behavioral side. And also we have to remind ourselves that the behaviors and even the outcomes themselves are not the goals per se, but they are ultimately a means to feeling a certain way in our moment to moment experience. When you take action from the foundation of identity, you develop a more complex sense of self with greater capacity for new things, and you’ll be able to change your habits.
