“NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS”, the PSYCHOLOGY behind it

Happy New Year everyone! The new year is coming, I guess you have made a few resolutions for the upcoming months. A few (of you) would have thought about staying fit and on maintaining good health, on starting a new habit or ending a bad habit, or also on pursuing a new hobby. Most of us would have taken resolutions for last year also, but somewhere down the road we had lost track of it. Do you want to know why? Come, let’s jump into the topic immediately!

Do you know that, out of all the resolutions, “55% are health related” (31% constitutes to start doing exercises or physical activities, 13% to maintain healthy diet and 11% to cultivate healthy habits), “32% are work oriented ones” (with 18% to save money, 12% to payoff the debts, 1% in learning some new skill and 1% to stay organized), “5% are social goals” (as of 2% in spending time with family and 3% is about enjoying life) and the last “8% are personal goals”.

Why do we take resolutions at New year? After all, New Year eve is just another rotation in the Earth’s revolution, right?

We humans usually prefer a day that hold some kind of importance, a “Temporal landmark”, to make a change in our lives. Such as start of a month or on the birth anniversaries or even on the day of wedding. Despite out of all these calendar landmarks, the new year’s is the biggest of all. Many psychological researches have found that, we tend to adopt to changes on the New year than on any other day. In fact, a research has said that, we are nearly 23% devoted to the commitments when taken on the beginning of a month, 62% taken at the start of a new week and 145% more committed when taken on the new year. This is called as the “Fresh Start Effect”, the psychologists speculate that, these temporal landmark forms a mental division between our present and past selves, thus motivating us towards our aspirations. These periodical landmarks may seem as a new start, but only setting goals seems easy than keeping them up…

Why is keeping up the Resolutions so hard?

The answer is simple: it is because of the “Changes”. We humans are used to “habits” than changes. Most of our New year resolutions demand change. Be it in lifestyle, behavioral or economic, we humans are simply “not used” to it. Also that, most of the resolutions demand not just a period of adjustments, but a life long adaptation. For instance, losing weight needs a change in the diet, lifestyle and physical activities for life long — if inconsistent, we’ll be back to square one.

How to Keep up with those Resolutions?

The first step for an upholding resolution, is to have a clear and specific goal. As in, losing weight is a “vague goal”; losing a certain amount of pounds, say 10lbs is a “specific and clear” one. Because of our resolutions being vague, we may not know how to approach it or what comes after the other. Thus , seeing no progress, we’d give up that resolution. Instead, try setting “SMART resolutions”, which are, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-specific resolutions.

So before setting up the resolution, we must be clear of: what are we going to accomplish, how can we measure our progress, do we have the resources to accomplish the goal and when is the deadline for accomplishing the goal. If we have the answers for these questions, then it’d be easier to follow the sequence in reaching our goals. Therefore, through this method we can monitor our progress; motivating us to work even better towards our goal.

This brings me to the next aspect, that is to have a planned “sub-goaled” path, to reach our goals. As aforementioned, we are not used for changes; by setting resolutions and trying to achieve it, we are going against ourselves. So, it is better to move step-by-step instead of aiming at the peak directly. Even researches claim that, we would be more motivated while we achieve our sub-goals in order to reach our main goal. For instance, if the goal is to have a good physique, don’t picturize yourself as a fitness model. Instead, start by acing the art of walking or jogging initially. Then mastering the weight lifting exercises, gradually from lite weights to heavy weights, that is required for the physique you have in your vision.

Don’t completely lean on “Motivation”, instead develop a “Organized system”. The probability of reaching the goals, purely relies on how systematic we are. The first thing to do, is to make our environment work along with us, in reaching our goals. In such a way that, there are very few steps between us and reaching the goals, and harder accessibility for the distractions to distract us from nearing to our goals. This can be done by setting up timely reminders, by having sticky-notes of our progress and of the next sub-goal(at the familiar sights of the house), or even by having our goals on our desktop screens. The more we are reminded of our goals, the more we stick to it.

Researches also suggest, writing down the goals increases the chances of reaching them. We can enhance this by penning down our progress in a blog, in a letter to our trustworthy ones or even in our dairies — just to keep ourselves accountable. We can also join communities that share the same interest or goals. By doing so, we can get motivated and also inspire the new members by our progress.

There will be “Setbacks”, only a very few are 100% of adherence to their resolutions. But it is not wrong if we face some setbacks. It is all about how we react to those off-stepping, that matters.

Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.

-James Clear.

If you miss a day in gym before the weekend, work it the next day, rather than waiting till the next week. If you ate an “out-of-the-diet” meal, don’t wait till next day to again follow the meal chart. Instead, follow the diet plan at the next meal itself. Don’t let the mistake become an excuse for compromising your resolution. Get back on track, immediately after a setback. Best way to reach the goal is by continuous repetitions and constant modification of the plan for achieving the resolution.

Once again, Happy New Year!

Until my next blog…

Stay Safe and Healthy!!!

• Siva