By the end of every year around New Year’s eve, we make resolutions that hardly ever turn into reality. ‘I will lose weight’, ‘I will eat healthier food’, ‘I will try to settle in’, ‘I will become more active’ are a few among many of our resolutions. Surprisingly, a research done by Professor Richard Wiseman, Department of Psychology from University of Hertfordshire, identified near about 88% of the resolutions that are made do not see the light of day.
Science, like always, has a beautiful answer for this. My NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) coach Luke Salway described this phenomenon to me once. He said, setting a New Year’s resolution requires enormous amount of willpower which is handled by the prefrontal cortex of our brain. He recommended to read the work of Prof. Shiv, who suggested that the enormous amount of willpower that is required is not simple for the brain to handle at once. For example: it is like telling someone who has not lifted any weight to lift 80kg at the first try without any prior practice.
1
Set New Year’s habit, not resolutions
What we set as resolutions are vague and abstract. For example: ’I will eat healthier food’ is vague. What we need to set is, ’I will eat rice only once in a day.’ The more practical the target, the easier it is for our brain to grasp and act upon. It also provides us clear action points to work on.
2
Smart goal setting
Smart goal setting is one of the essential contents of one of my training modules. Here I encourage my participants to set goals that are specific, measurable, action oriented/achievable, realistic, and time bound. An example for a SMART goal will be – ‘I will join the local gym to lose at least 5kg within the next 3 months.’ So crosscheck with the goals you have set. Make sure they are specific not abstract, measurable not vague, action oriented rather than only planning, realistic than imaginary and has specified time boundary.
3
One at a time
Stanford’s Prof. Shiv coined a term called “cognitive overload’. It simply states, for our brain it is easier to handle only one New Year’s resolution than many. One goal will be more realistic and attainable than setting multiple goals and losing the grasp of all of it. To exemplify, go for one goal for the coming six months, and set another for the later.
4
Take baby steps
One of the common mistakes we do is set target so unimaginably high that we fail miserably. Doing small things will give us a sense of achievement; will increase the confidence and motivation to stick to the goal. Breakdown your goal to the simplest task possible and maintain it with consistency. For example: schedule your exercise time at least for 30 minutes per day, avoiding the extra dessert for healthier eating, meeting at least one new people in every networking event and so on based upon your resolution.
5
Write it down
Writing your goals and the actions might increase your probability of getting those done. It will work as a constant reminder for you and one thing you must ensure is to update it with consistency, time to time. And if you are not into writing, tell someone about your goal and assign them the task of reminding you once in a while. It might sound like nagging when they do, but it will help you eventually.
Last Words
Don’t beat yourself up. After all your efforts and hard work, it might not work out as planned. If you lose track or fail to act upon it, do not give up. Pick yourself up again and start over. Consistency is the key no matter how little it is.