New Year’s resolutions you can keep

New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving Hell with them as usual.
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910

It’s that time of year again: most of us will look back on the past twelve months with a bit of dismay over the things we didn’t do. We’ll brood over the goals we didn’t accomplish and we’ll promise ourselves that next year will be different: next year we’ll make major improvements to our lives.

Unfortunately, most resolutions aren’t kept. It may be a new year, but it’s the same old you.

There is hope, however. If you want to bring about sustainable change in your life, you have to make resolutions you can keep. There are five criteria that need to be met before you can make and keep a resolution to change, now or at any time of the year.

You must truly want to change.
The perceived benefits of change must outweigh the cost of changing.
You must believe you are capable of change.
You must arrange your environment to assist your change.
You must make the change a ritual or habit.

These points require a bit of explanation. Today I’ll expand on the first two, and next time I’ll explore the remaining items.

You must truly want to change.

If you’re going to be successful with your New Year’s resolutions, you must truly want to change. Too often, we select resolutions based on what another person wants for us. It could be a spouse, relationship partner, family member, boss or friend. But it doesn’t really matter who that person is; we instinctively resist altering our behavior when someone else pushes us to change.

Change is not sustainable if you’re doing it simply to please someone else. So the first step in making resolutions you can keep is to make sure you truly want to change. Write down all the reasons you want to change your behavior; the stronger your reasons, the better your chance of sustaining change.

If your resolution isn’t yours, there’s no point in making it.

The perceived benefits of change must outweigh the cost of changing.

Change is so difficult because of the timing difference between the cost and the benefits. No matter what behavior you want to change, it’s probably providing some short-term reward or benefit. To alter that behavior, you usually have to give up that benefit, while the rewards of the new behavior won’t be enjoyed until some point in the future.

So even if the benefits of change outweigh what you give up, you have to accept that there will be a timing difference: you have to pay first and get the rewards later. This trade-off is extremely difficult for most people. We’d rather have immediate gratification, even if it means we’ll pay for it in the future.

If you’re not honest about this delay, and if the rewards you’ll receive from changing aren’t significant enough, it’s unlikely you’ll persist once you start to miss the immediate benefits you’re sacrificing. Be sure your final reward is something you truly value and is well worth the cost.

I hope you’ll reflect on these points before you start making New Year’s resolutions; these two criteria will help you choose goals you’re more likely to achieve. Next time, we’ll discuss the remaining items, which should assist you in meeting your goals.

Let’s make sure that this year, you make resolutions you’ll be able to keep.

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Benjamin Franklin
1706 – 1790