No New Year Resolutions: Don't "Should" On Me!

We're halfway through January! How are your New Year's resolutions going?

The odds are: not well. Research has shown that while resolutions are often followed for the first two weeks of January, they tend to start to slip shortly after that and are often in a full backslide by February. Approximately half of the population makes resolutions each New Year, but studies show that up to 88% of those resolutions will end in failure, with a quarter of all resolvers giving up by the end of the first week.

Despite all this failure, more than half of us will make the exact same resolution next year.

But resolutions must be a good idea! What could be bad about making a pledge to lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, or manage your money better?

Quite a bit! Psychologists say that most resolutions are not only destined to fail, but can actively harm you when they do. They have been described as "exactly the wrong way to change our behaviour", and are often poorly planned and don't take into account how human habits and willpower really work.

How do they work? We'll go into that, as well as why we won't be making any resolutions this year — and what we're doing instead.

Why Resolutions Are Rigged To Fail (And How It Hurts You)

Most resolutions are made as a way to motivate you into improving yourself. They're often broadly-defined, large projects that depend on willpower to break bad habits — habits that your brain might not be ready to change. They feel good when you make them, but that alone won't be enough to get you going.

Willpower isn't a steady, infinite ability that all people are born with. Brains have a finite amount of willpower, and exercising it takes energy and training just like exercising your body. If you start the year with a promise to go to the gym every day when you've never gone before, it's the same as giving your willpower a 500 lb barbell to lift. Your brain just can't handle it.

What's worse is that many resolutions are too broad and unrealistic, increasing the weight of that mental barbell. If they're abstract it makes it difficult for your brain to focus on them, and if they're aimed at fixing a bad habit that you've established for years they'll pit you against your own brain.

So what happens when you try to lift that barbell and fail?

Psychology professor Peter Herman says something called the "false hope syndrome" happens, where you make positive assumptions about yourself that you don't really believe. These assumptions don't work, and when they fall through they damage your self-esteem, cause guilt and anxiety, or even lead to self-loathing. We start to distrust ourselves because of them. When the same resolution fails year after year, what makes us think things will be any different this year?

Even if our resolutions are successful at first, they can still backfire on us. You might think that your life will change if you reduce your debt or change your eating habits. But if it doesn't, it can discourage you and cause you to revert back to your old behaviour. Or what if you do really well at going to the gym for a month, and then miss a week due to the flu? Then you run the risk of the "what-the-hell" effect.

The "what-the-hell" effect happens when you set a limit for yourself, break it, then go "what the hell!" and overindulge in whatever you were trying to not do. People who are on a diet and have a calorie-laden dessert at lunch tend to eat a lot more for the rest of the day because their diet goal has already been shot. This can lead to even more binge eating than if they'd never been on a diet in the first place.

The stricter your limits are the more likely you are to binge, and the same thing can happen with spending money, procrastinating, or just about anything else you resolve to stop doing. Most of the time these problems are coping mechanisms, so when you fail at changing them you indulge in them for comfort.

And it doesn't stop there. Because resolutions are tied to a date (the first of January), when we fail we tend to give up on them until the start of the next year, robbing us of the chance to recover and try again. Because of this not making a resolution can be healthier for you than making one.

Finally, making resolutions can become an addiction of its own. While nothing actually changes, we keep making the same resolutions over and over to try and replace whatever problem we're trying to get rid of. We would rather continue to do something that doesn't work rather than try something new that could work, but could also fail.

New Year's resolutions are based on the premise that we are flawed and need to fix something that's broken. Some negative emotions can be motivating, but these ones are not. They can only hurt.

Don't Set Resolutions — Make Systems and Add Meaning

But there's still hope! The flaws in most New Year's resolutions are ones that can be replaced. The best way to start is to stop focusing on the result you want and start planning out a new lifestyle instead.

That's right, planning: building achievable, positive systems with specific steps and loose limits that you know you can follow — and testing them.

Rather than saying "I want to walk more", try parking your car farther from work. Instead of saying you're going to run a certain number of miles, prompt yourself to reach a jogging pace where you can hold a conversation without losing breath. If you want to start going to bed earlier, test different tips on falling asleep: turn the lights off earlier, take melatonin, make sure you're the right temperature. If one option doesn't work, try another.

Get rid of the negative framework. Look at what you want rather than what you think you should do. Instead of pledging to fix something you dislike about yourself, make a list of what you already love about yourself and your life and focus on getting more of that. You can also list the things that cause you stress and negative feelings, and try to introduce the opposite of those things into your life.

Don't wait until January 1st to make a change. Make it a year-long, daily process made of small steps, and keep yourself in the present instead of worrying about the future. Focus on one improvement at a time so you don't become overwhelmed.

Remove temptation. If you want to lose weight, avoid buying unhealthy food in the first place rather than have them in the house where you'll have to resist them.

Celebrate milestones and forgive yourself for slip-ups. This will help "rewire" your brain away from bad habits through positive reinforcement. Instead of thinking "don't do that", you'll be more likely to think "I can do this instead". Acknowledge the things you can't control: you can take steps to improve your performance at work, but if you don't get the promotion you want it could be due to the mindset of your boss or any other number of things. Don't blame yourself for those failures. Try again. Test a different tactic.

And last of all, look at what your obstacles are before you make any plans. You might realize that what you want to improve isn't something you need to be worried about at all.

Sometimes there's a good reason we're the way we already are.