December 28, 2024 • 41 mins
This week we bring back an episode from 2022 on the psychology of New Years resolutions, the significance of the new year for making goals and promises to ourselves, why we set New Years resolutions, the typical reasons we tend to fail and how to be successful. We explore self efficacy, personal development theory and the psychology behind failure to understand how we can achieve our 2025 goals. Happy listening!
PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/755841/person-in-progress-by-jemma-sbeg/
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back, Welcome back
to another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties. New listeners,
(00:29):
old listeners. It's so great to have you here, So
great to have you here for this super exciting topic
that I am so pumped to talk about today, and
that is the psychology of New Year's resolutions. There was
no better time to talk about this than now. Twenty
(00:49):
twenty three is right around the corner. Maybe you're listening
to this in the month of January. The new year
has just started, and with that, many of us and
to make some pretty big promises or goals for ourselves
for the new year for twenty twenty three, which I
think is honestly incredible, a great idea. I think that
(01:13):
New Year's resolutions are a really kind of positive thing
to reflect on and to set for ourselves as we
enter into a new chapter. You know, they're all about
self improvement and agency and growth, which I think also
really embodies this show. So I'm a big fan and
if you are setting New Year's resolutions this year, I
(01:36):
want you to succeed. So today we are going to
break down the history and also the psychology behind New
Year's resolutions, why it is that we set them, to
begin with, why they often fail, but also what we
can learn from our failures and the failure of New
(01:57):
Year's resolutions so that we can succeed, so that we
can see our New Year's resolutions through. Essentially, what I
really want to understand and explain in today's episode is
what it is that determines the success of a New
Year's resolution. There is so much fascinating research behind this,
(02:20):
so many interesting concepts like Roman philosophy, self efficacy and
self improvement theory, even a discussion of social norms, and
so much more. So I am so excited to kind
of jump into this first episode of the New Year series,
perhaps the first episode of twenty twenty three. It's going
(02:41):
to be an amazing year, and what a great way
to kick it off with a discussion about New Year's resolutions.
So let's get into it and learn all that there
is to know about New Year's resolutions and hopefully learn
how we can apply some of the theory some of
the psychology to our own goals so that we can
(03:02):
be successful at the end of the day. So, of course,
as we always do at the beginning of each episode,
we want to break down some of the history behind
New Year's resolutions and get our basics down pat before
(03:22):
jumping into the psychology and the explanations behind why this concept,
this idea of making promises to ourselves at the beginning
of the new year, why it even exists. So the
origin of making New Year's resolutions, it rests with the Babylonians.
For those of you who do not know who these
people are, I didn't know who they were, but they
(03:43):
were an ancient group of people who lived in present
day Iraq from I think like two thousand to four
hundred b c. And many historians trace the beginnings and
the existence of New Year's resolutions back to this group.
So these people would reportedly make promises to the gods
(04:05):
in hopes that they would earn good favor in the
coming year. So, for example, they might make a promise
that they're going to have the most successful harvest they've
ever seen, or be a really good partner or a
really good husband or wife, and by succeeding in that
by fulfilling that goal, that ambition, they almost demonstrated to
(04:27):
the gods that they were true to their word, that
they were had integrity, that they were good people, and
as a result they would receive good favor good karma
from these same gods. Although I don't think that we
make our modern day resolutions to the gods per se,
the new year is still and obviously a very important
(04:49):
and somewhat spiritual time that represents so many things, but
mostly new beginnings, the future, or a new chapter in
our lives. Interestingly, this is I think a very common meaning.
It's applied across different cultures. The month of January is
actually named after the god Janus, who was the god
(05:13):
of new beginnings, So we can see that there is
this reverence placed on the new year throughout many cultures
and throughout many time periods. I think as humans we
really crave the comfort of meaning and tradition, and the
new year is able to bring both of these things
and offer somewhat of a dedicated time for reflection and
(05:36):
contemplation of what we want from this new period of
our lives. And you know, it often involves a pretty
big celebration as well, you know, fireworks, champagne and all
of that. But more than that, I think it provides
a dedicated time for looking back, feeling grateful, nostalgic, and
(05:58):
perhaps also thinking about what it is about our lives
that may be missing, something where we feel we may
be lacking or dissatisfied, where we can improve, whilst also
being hopeful for the future and invest it in the
ways that we can better ourselves. We tend to set
(06:19):
resolutions at this time of the year because the New
Year in particular serves us this cyclical marker of time
during which we can reevaluate and take inventory on our lives,
and the drive for making resolutions is very much motivated
by this punctuation in time, which activates our hopes and
(06:40):
our expectations for what we want to achieve going forward.
So this psychologist, her name is doctor Strongen. She had
a really good explanation for this that I thought would
be super relevant when we're talking about why it is
that the new year really sparks this desire to change
up our lives, and she says that the New Year
what it does is gives us kind of a sense
(07:02):
of renewal and It causes us to think about areas
in our lives where we want to improve. And this
kind of distinct start of a new chapter of a
new year, you know, the clock kind of ticks over
into a new calendar. It feels like a natural time
to make this change. There is really no better time
than the beginning of a new year. And I think
(07:24):
this is the marvel and also the significance of a
new year for making massive changes to our everyday lives
and I guess our overall lifestyle. When we think of
New Year's resolutions, I think a few typical categories or
examples often come to mind, and there's actually been research
(07:48):
on this on these very categories, these common categories that
we see. So this woman, Kaitlin Woolley from Cornell, she
did some research into New Year's resolutions and she wanted
to find out what were the most common types of resolutions.
I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, but
(08:08):
the majority, overwhelmingly. I think it was as high as
like fifty five fifty six percent of resolutions were health related,
so wanting to exercise more, eat healthy, lose weight. Those
were by far the most common New Year's resolutions. Reported.
Then we have work related and financial related kind of
(08:32):
resolutions at about thirty five percent, So a lot of
people reported that they are going into the new year
wanting to save money, get out of debt, get organized
by a house, these kind of financial and work related
ambitions that they have. And then we also have these
social goals. These accounted for about five to ten percent overall.
(08:53):
You know, goals like spending more time with family, making
more friends, making time for romance, going on dates, meeting
a partner. These were also a pretty big category of
New Year's resolutions. I don't think I was surprised at
all to hear how many resolutions or goals we make
at the start of the new year have to do
(09:16):
with our physical health and our physical appearance, mainly just
because I think it is a huge source of just
general insecurity for many of us, for many many people,
and these goals can be super varied, but they're often
focused on things like feeling better in our bodies, maybe
being able to accomplish a certain physical feit like a
(09:37):
half marathon. Sometimes they have a lot to do with
our eating and our diet, but of course also on
how we look. Fitness is obviously a part of this,
but I definitely have a bit of a bone to
pick with goals that are focused on weight loss, just
because I actually think they're really hard to achieve, especially
(09:59):
with the pressure and the hype of a new year.
We get so excited about this. We imagine how we're
going to look, you know, what it's going to feel like.
We don't understand the investment that it sometimes takes. And
I've been seeing New Year's resolutions about weight loss everywhere
all over my TikTok right now, and it's kind of
(10:19):
what inspired me to do this episode because I began
thinking about my own New Year's expectations or goals for
twenty twenty three, and I can honestly say, I think
this is the first year that my New Year's resolutions
are not focused on what I look like or you know,
(10:41):
my body, which is like so shocking to me. I
think that they have been focused on that for as
long as I can remember. There's no shame if that
is your New Year's resolution. You know, it's your body,
it's your choice. As long as you're going into it
with a healthy and sustainable mindset, go for it. It's
honestly your life and if that's going to make you happier,
(11:03):
that's fantastic that you have, you know, decided to focus
on that for your health and as an element of
your health for twenty twenty three. But I think there
are other health goals as well that are perhaps more
achievable and I would say more holistic. You know, maybe
your New Year's resolution is to stop drinking or to
drink less. That's one of mine next year. I really,
(11:25):
I honestly do not have the time to be hungover
as much as I was last year, and I just
kind of want to cut back. So that's one of
my news resolutions. Another one I see quite often is
to like walk ten thousand steps a day. I think
these are like that one in particular, that ten thousand
step one is a lot more achievable than setting some
(11:48):
obscure weight loss goal because it's achievable, it can be
integrated into your life, and it affects so much more
than just you know, the number on a scale. It
affects the time we spent outdoors, it affects how we
feel in our body, it affects our cardiovascular health. So
I think it's a much more well rounded goal. Another
(12:10):
big category that, obviously I'm a huge fan of is
the mental health resolutions, the mental health goals. These are
mainly focused on our emotional wellbeing and the things that
we can do to shift our mindset and our mental perspective.
You know, there are the normal ones, like going to therapy,
(12:31):
trying to perhaps prioritize your boundaries and your space, but
there are some others that I think are fantastic, like
reducing your screen time. Our exposure to social media and
to just the Internet and screens in general can have
such a strange and nuanced effect on our mental health.
(12:53):
So I think reducing screen time is such a fantastic
goal if that is your priority, reading more, that's an
amazing one, it's highly achievable. And another one I saw
was to get at least twenty minutes of sun or
outdoors time a day. That is such an amazing New
Year's resolution. Honestly, it's so easy to integrate into our lives,
(13:15):
especially if you live somewhere like Australia, where you know
the weather is sometimes bad but in general most of
the time bearable. And it also allows us to incorporate
many of the health benefits of being in nature. So
I think that if that is something you want to
focus on, what an amazing goal. A couple others, just
(13:37):
to briefly mention, we talked about financial goals, you know,
saving for a particular reason, maybe you want to buy
a house or go on a big trip. And then
there are some other like niche goals and achievements like
I don't know, wanting to climb everest, or to knit
fifty mini jackets for your cats, start a business, start
a podcast. That one sounds pretty familiar, and these kind
(14:00):
of goals are often super unique and I would say
not shared by many people, which at times, on one hand,
I think can make it harder to form community, but
it also makes it so much more worthwhile because fewer
people have that goal and achieving it is going to
be so much more sweet and such an amazing feeling.
(14:24):
Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. I honestly think
that any facet of our lives where we're perhaps not
quite satisfied or fulfilled or would like to do better,
can be made into a goal. And sometimes the significance
of a new year, of a new leaf and new chapter,
(14:45):
but also the explicit kind of start date and point
from which to track our progress can be a huge
enabler of our success. But let's now tackle the psychology
behind how we can and create realistic years resolutions and
almost offer a bit of an equation for success so
(15:07):
that we can start twenty twenty three with the best
versions of ourselves in mind. So we have explained some
of the history, the categories, the traditions behind New Year's resolutions,
But now to the psychology. What is it about the
(15:30):
new year that causes us to have these elaborate and
grand expectations for ourselves to set these resolutions. I think
as humans we are naturally and innately very attuned to
self improvement. It is very much part of our complexity
and a unique aspect of our species that we have
(15:52):
this capacity to consider the future and ourselves within it,
and with that we tend to imagine versions of ourselves
that do not yet exist, ones that might be better.
Because of this unique ability, we're able to set goals
and objectives that lead to better versions of ourselves. That
(16:15):
is the premise of New Year's resolutions. The idea, though
of a New Year's resolution, it tends to rest on
three fairly important psychological concepts. The first being personal development,
the second being self efficacy, and finally the idea of
social norms personal development. It's all about looking inward and
(16:41):
focusing on the ways to better yourself. It's so obvious
how that has a relationship to New Year's resolutions, but
essentially this focus allows us to increase our self awareness,
our self esteem, and to fulfill future aspirations that we
may have for our lives. When we make a New
(17:02):
Year's resolution, whatever it may be, we are channeling our
personal development and our focus on personal growth, and kind
of channeling that in a way that allows us to
be productive and to live a more fulfilled than satisfying life.
Without this ability or the skills to reflect inwards and upwards,
(17:26):
we can remain fairly stagnant and unsatisfied with our lives,
which is why the new year is such an important
time to make certain promises to ourselves, because they are
focused on improving our lives in order to enhance the
overall quality. So even if we don't fully realize our goals,
the very act I think of just reflecting on where
(17:48):
we want to improve, where we want to be putting
energy towards that is so valuable because not only does
it mean that we have a sense of the future
and a sense of meaning, but we also have a
desire to be better, which is in itself a very
inherently valuable idea to have. The second psychological concept that
(18:11):
I think is perhaps even more important to consider in
the context of New Year's resolutions is self efficacy. So
self efficacy is at the very core, perhaps the central
pillar to establishing goals for ourselves in the new year. Essentially,
it refers to our belief in our capacity to execute
(18:35):
the behaviors necessary to produce specific outcomes. So, just to
break that down a little bit more, it essentially encompasses
our confidence that our behavior and our actions will be
able to exert an influence over our environment and over
our future, so that we can achieve our goals. Without
(18:59):
self efficacy, without this belief in our ability to alter
our lives, the idea of a New Year's resolution, it
literally wouldn't exist. It wouldn't be anything but wishful thinking.
That is what distinguishes the New Year's resolution from just,
you know, a fantasy. It's that acknowledgment that what we
(19:20):
want for our lives will require our effort, and therefore
this belief that our actions, our behaviors will actually have
some influence over whether or not we achieve a certain goal.
You know, without self efficacy, why would why would we
even try? There's no point trying. I think virtually all
(19:41):
people can identify some form of goal that they have. However,
they think. Where we go wrong is that most of
us don't always think about the fact that putting these
plans into action isn't as simple as we think, and
self efficacy is going to play a major role and
(20:01):
how we approach this goal and how we approach this challenge.
You know, people with stronger self efficacy, they often recover
really quickly from setbacks. They make a plan, they view
problems as something to be mastered, and they really are
a lot more invested in their goals and they're invested
(20:21):
in the activities that they are required to do to
achieve these goals. In contrast, we see people who have
lower or weaker self efficacy tend to really avoid some
of the challenging tasks and behaviors that are required. They
focus a lot on the potential of failure and on
(20:42):
the negative outcomes, and they quickly lose confidence in their
personal abilities. Right like they don't feel confident that they
have the agency, they have the strength, they have the
skills necessary to achieve their goal. Obviously, if you have
(21:03):
set an ambitious New Year's resolution, whatever it may be,
a strong sense of self efficacy is going to be
a great asset to achieving this goal. And importantly, self
efficacy it's not something you're born with, right, It's actually
something that you can develop and train within yourself. And
(21:23):
there are a few ways to do that. Firstly, by
celebrating your successes, by really consciously recognizing instances in which
you have been able to influence your destiny or change
an outcome, modeling and observing the behaviors and stories of others,
having those positive role models or mentors to kind of
(21:46):
show you that this is possible. And another way is
to seek out positive feedback and positive affirmations. Obviously, when
you hear positive feedback from others, that can really help
improve your sense of self efficacy, and not only that,
but your sense that you are actually achieving your goal,
(22:07):
that it is recognizable from the perspective of other people.
You know, if your therapist tells you that you're doing
a really good job at prioritizing your mental health. That's
setting boundaries. That's going to be so encouraging and it's
going to make you want to keep going. But in contrast,
(22:29):
and on the other hand, negative feedback negative comments can
also have a pretty powerful undermining effect. So be conscious
about who you share your goals and ambitions with. I
don't think there is anything more demoralizing than someone telling
you that what you're doing is not worth it, or
(22:50):
that you're going to fail. It's such a terrible, terrible feeling.
So if you want to succeed, you have to create
a supportive environment that contains people who really believe in
your abilities and they believe in your success. Finally, making
a New Year's resolution, it's somewhat of a social norm
(23:10):
these days, right, like a social norm being these kind
of informal rules or expectations that we have. It's very
much influenced by what we see other people doing. It
gets to December early January and people start talking about
their New Year's resolutions, and we feel like we should
(23:30):
probably have a few of our own. This is not
a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it's
one of the more positive social norms that we've discussed
on the show, because, as we said, the primary reason
for setting this kind of goal at the start of
the year is for self growth, So as long as
we're not harming anyone, they seem to be overall a
(23:51):
pretty positive thing. Well at least that's what we think
is the case. But it might actually be that New
Year's resolutions are neither positive or negative, especially when we
consider how many of us and how many of our
resolutions end up failing. And that is what I want
(24:12):
to discuss next. Why is it that so many of
our ambitions for the new year end up being forgotten
by the second or third week of January. Every year,
in early January, millions and millions of us resolve to
(24:36):
change something about our lives, change something about our behavior,
whether it is to get really fit, to eat better,
to save money, spend more time with our friends, whatever
it is, there is no denying that most of us
have something in mind that we want to change in
twenty twenty three. Here is the sad reality though for
(25:00):
most of us, these New Year's resolutions are going to
fall by the wayside within a few weeks. The best
example I think of this of the early failure of
many resolutions is thinking about how busy your gym is
in the first weeks of January, yet by February they're
normally back to usual. That's because we often get wrapped
(25:23):
up in the excitement of setting the resolution, of imagining
the outcome without realizing how much commitment it can take.
The easiest step to making a year's resolution is telling
yourself that you're going to do it. Is making that
promise and imagining the success, imagining your future body, or
(25:44):
your future financial situation, or your amazing life, especially in
that moment before we actually have to do some of
the work. It is very easy to fantasize, but for
anyone who's actually set a new year's resolution, it's a
lot harder to actually achieve that goal because it requires
(26:06):
often a lot of tedious and persistent work. I don't
really think it's even a goal right if it's easy
to achieve. That's part of the allure of New Year's
resolutions is that they are really large and grand and significant,
and they require that significance of the new year in
order to begin. There are quite a few reasons they
(26:29):
want to discuss as to why it's so difficult to
stick to our new year's resolutions, and many of these
explanations have some pretty fascinating psychology attached. Firstly, a large
amount of our daily behaviors tend to be motivated by
what we see as unconscious and automatic habits that have
(26:53):
in many ways been ingrained in us since our childhood,
since our teenage years. We unconsciously reach for the same
types of food, we wake up at the same time,
we see this same people, We use the same forms
of transport because these actions and these behaviors have become
(27:14):
so habitual, and it makes it really difficult to change.
And over time, these repetitive ways of behaving tend to
become very much automatically queued by the situations that we're in,
and they're completely independent from our deliberate thought processes. So
much of what we do on a day to day
(27:36):
basis we do without thinking. When we set a news resolution, though,
that is a very deliberate, a very conscious action, a
very conscious thought, and it can be really difficult to
integrate this conscious and deliberate thing we want to achieve
into our daily lives, and into our daily lives that
(27:59):
are filled with automatic behaviors and unconscious habits because they
are so hard to integrate. And because a lot of
our resolutions often require almost rewriting or rewiring our automatic behaviors,
it takes a lot of conscious energy to uphold these resolutions,
(28:20):
which is why they often fail. This explains why achieving
our New Year's resolutions it's not just about pure determination.
It's not just about how much you want it. The
act of achieving any goal requires a lot of intense,
concentrated energy, and more than that, it requires rewriting unconscious
(28:45):
behaviors you've probably followed for years and years and years.
Often we don't really map out or think about what
it's going to take to accomplish a goal, and instead
we rely very much so on that excitement of the
new year as the thing that's going to push us
to accomplish this goal. This buzz, this excitement, this expectation,
(29:07):
and then that buzz wears off, or maybe you realize
that actually you set a few unrealistic expectations for yourself.
For example, you know, if you've decided that twenty twenty
three you're going to run a marathon, and you've bought
tickets for a race in April, it's highly unlikely that
(29:28):
you're going to do that. You really set yourself up
to fail because you haven't been honest or realistic with yourself.
The cycle of making and subsequently breaking resolutions, it boils
down to one core issue or concept, and that is honesty.
(29:50):
Being honest with yourself about what it is you want,
why you want to achieve it, and how achievable it is.
So before you set your alution for twenty twenty three,
it's really important to ask yourself some of those core
questions and be honest with yourself in answering them. Why
(30:10):
is it that this goal is important to you and
how do you imagine it's going to make your life better?
Really really think about that. Is the outcome of your resolution?
Is it going to be enough to motivate you to
do the things that you need to do, and is
(30:31):
that final end goal something that is achievable? Honestly, It's
also important to reflect on the times when you've tried
in the past to achieve this thing or to pursue
this change and what went wrong. You know, maybe last
year you wanted to wake up at seven am every day,
but you didn't think about the fact that you work
(30:52):
a nine to five, or that a lot of your
socializing happens in the evening. So think about why you failed.
Think about what it wo was about your environment, about
your surroundings that made it difficult to accomplish this goal.
We often, you know, set lofty goals for the future
without seriously and honestly assessing why we've probably struggled in
(31:13):
the past, and without examining where we are resistant to change.
That cycle of that, you know, that psycle of excitement
and resolve and then failure continues to repeat. It's also
really important to be honest about what else is going
to have to change in your life to meet your
goal and to meet your resolution. We often think about
(31:36):
our New Year's resolutions as a pretty isolated desire or
an isolated dream, without recognizing the lifestyle change that they
are going to require. The one I always think of
is the new Year's resolution to quit drinking. And that's
one of mine for this year, quitting you know, to
quit drinking, quitting alcohol. It sounds simple enough, right you know,
(32:00):
you just say no, you just don't drink. And when
you think about it on an individual basis, when you're
home by yourself, it sounds pretty achievable, right, Like, it
sounds fairly simple, but then you have to think about
it in terms of the other contexts in our lives
in which alcohol is present and how much it tends
(32:21):
to dominate social occasions and celebrations. Are you going to
be okay with not drinking during these times or maybe
missing out because of this choice? And are you going
to be able to make the changes to your overall
lifestyle to enact this goal. By asking ourselves these questions
(32:42):
and also answering them honestly, we're actually setting ourselves up
for success because we can alter our resolutions and be
more realistic from the get go, and therefore more likely
to succeed. There are, of course, some other reasons why
we typically fail our news for sos. Just to list
(33:03):
off a couple, Sometimes we just lack accountability. You know,
it's very easy to fail if the only person you're
going to disappoint is yourself. Sometimes our goal doesn't allow
for small wins, so we give up because we don't
see any progress. Maybe it is a lack of planning,
or the stakes are just too low, And sometimes it's
(33:25):
just about self doubt and not believing that we're able
to do them. We're not able to achieve what we
set our minds to With all of that in mind,
I really want to turn to our final point for
this episode, and perhaps the most significant, how can we
actually be successful with all of this information and knowledge
(33:46):
in mind? What can we learn from our failures so
that we can see through our resolutions we can make
the change that we want to in our lives. Luckily
for us, there is quite a lot of research on this,
and so I've gathered a few tips for us to
all share and to hopefully learn from. Firstly, start small.
(34:12):
Creating smaller goals that are practical and don't restrict you
too much is going to be so much more achievable
because those goals and the actions required to meet them
are not going to disrupt your life as much. Think
about all of those automatic behaviors that we were talking
about before. Undermining them and rewriting them takes a lot
(34:33):
of effort. But if we start out small, you know,
maybe by initially trying to exercise just for five minutes
out of the day, of just trying to replace certain
foods that are making us feel unwell, it's a lot
easier to integrate into our lives rather than trying to
completely shift our lifestyle overnight. These resolutions are also be
(34:54):
easier for you to stick to because you're not going
to feel like you're missing out, and you'll still be
able to move closer to your big goal. Sometimes I
think we get so excited and we are so impatient
that we just rush to the finish line, and what
ends up happening is that it's a not very sustainable
and we just end up failing because any kind of
(35:16):
massive life change is going to take so much energy.
Similar to this is ensuring that your goals are clearly defined.
I think often we set these very big, sweeping goals
and we make these big statements like I want to
be healthier, or I want to make new friends, or
(35:36):
I want to be more successful. But unfortunately those goals,
as amazing as they sound, they're not very clear, and
it's hard to hold yourself accountable if you don't really
have a vision or an idea of success in mind.
So making sure that you know exactly what it is
(35:56):
you're working for you create a resolution so that you
can actionably see when you're getting closer to the end
outcome is going to really help you. In a similar
Vein to both of those things, I think also limiting
yourself to a few resolutions, maybe just one, is also
going to be really really helpful and really enable your success.
(36:19):
It's really tempting to do these big to do lists
and to have all these really insane expectations for what
we're capable of doing. Maybe you're someone who can handle
that amount of pressure and that many things on your mind,
but most of us can't really focus on a huge
list at once. It's better to break it down into
(36:40):
maybe just one or one or two goals that we
really want to achieve, and that way when not as
easily overwhelmed and as frustrated, and we can integrate those
goals into our life a bit better. If we've decided,
you know, I want to exercise more, and then I
want to eat better, and then I want to be
more sustainable, and I want to spend money better, that
(37:02):
is a lot. That is a lot, So maybe try
and find a goal that links all of them. Like
walking to work that is sustainable. It's a great exercise,
and it saves you money because you don't have to
pay for petrol or pay for transport. Another few tips
that I kind of gathered was to be realistic. I
think we've talked about that already find community and with
(37:26):
that accountability. If your goal is shared, you're able to
relate to others who are going through similar things or
facing similar setbacks. And also you feel accountable and you're
excited to pursue the goal because you have community surrounding it.
Find a way to track your progress and see the
(37:46):
small wins. When we set a big goal and it's
in the future and it's going to take a lot
for us to get there, we can become disheartened quite
easily because we don't see any output from our efforts.
So find a way to track your progress or to
give yourself some small wins to motivate you along the way.
(38:08):
One way that I do this is I create kind
of like a visual vision board or a resource to
think about what I want to achieve and why. And
it helps me keep focused and really visualize the outcome
that I want and why I want it. It's been
so helpful. I do this at the start of most years,
where I create like a bit of a collage about
(38:31):
where I see my year going. It's firstly a really
great way to reflect and see what it is that
I've realized about that, but it also makes it really
clear to me about what it is I'm working towards,
and I don't lose sight in all the chaos of
our day to day lives. Finally, it's so important to
(38:51):
be mindful, take responsibility for your actions, and to stay committed,
but also not get too wrapped up in one goal, right.
You want your life to be enjoyable, and often if
you put all your eggs in one basket, if you're
too dedicated, if you go about it really intensely, you're
not going to be successful because you're just going to
be exhausted and you're going to lose motivation really really fast.
(39:16):
So start with a picture of your future self in mind.
Make that image big and bright, Imagine what it feels like,
Imagine how you feel, and hold that really deeply. Hold
on to it as a daily reminder for what you
are working for and why you're working towards. That change
your phone background or something about your environment that reminds
(39:37):
you of your goal every day. I saw this really
interesting quote. I think it's a great thing to share
to end up to you. To wrap up this episode,
winners and losers have the same goals. It's all about
who is most consistent. You're allowed to have setbacks, you're
allowed to have failures, but if you keep working out
(40:00):
it day by day, you just aim to be one
percent better every day. It's going to be achievable, and
I wish you the best of luck. I hope that
you're successful. How amazing to be setting new Year's resolutions.
I am so excited for the new year and all
that's going to come with it. It's going to be
a big year for the podcast and I cannot thank
you enough for supporting me throughout twenty twenty two. So
(40:22):
thank you to all the new listeners, to everyone who's shared,
to everyone who's messaged me and followed me. I am
so grateful and I cannot wait to push this even
further and do so many amazing things in the new year.
If you enjoyed this episode, if you think that other
people would enjoy it as well, please feel free to
leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever
(40:46):
you get your podcasts. It really helps the show to
grow and to reach new people, So if you feel
called to do so, it makes a huge difference. And yeah,
I would love I'd be very grateful if you would
do that. And if you're interested in seeing more of
my content, please follow our Instagram at that Psychology Podcast.
(41:06):
Often I let listeners of the show decide the episodes
that I publish for the week, So if that is
something you are interested in, please give us a follow
and participate in the community that way. Thank you again
for listening. Good luck. If you've said a New Year's resolution,
I'm sure you're going to do amazing and I will
see you next week for a new episode.
Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, welcome back, Welcome back
to another episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties. New listeners,
(00:29):
old listeners. It's so great to have you here, So
great to have you here for this super exciting topic
that I am so pumped to talk about today, and
that is the psychology of New Year's resolutions. There was
no better time to talk about this than now. Twenty
(00:49):
twenty three is right around the corner. Maybe you're listening
to this in the month of January. The new year
has just started, and with that, many of us and
to make some pretty big promises or goals for ourselves
for the new year for twenty twenty three, which I
think is honestly incredible, a great idea. I think that
(01:13):
New Year's resolutions are a really kind of positive thing
to reflect on and to set for ourselves as we
enter into a new chapter. You know, they're all about
self improvement and agency and growth, which I think also
really embodies this show. So I'm a big fan and
if you are setting New Year's resolutions this year, I
(01:36):
want you to succeed. So today we are going to
break down the history and also the psychology behind New
Year's resolutions, why it is that we set them, to
begin with, why they often fail, but also what we
can learn from our failures and the failure of New
(01:57):
Year's resolutions so that we can succeed, so that we
can see our New Year's resolutions through. Essentially, what I
really want to understand and explain in today's episode is
what it is that determines the success of a New
Year's resolution. There is so much fascinating research behind this,
(02:20):
so many interesting concepts like Roman philosophy, self efficacy and
self improvement theory, even a discussion of social norms, and
so much more. So I am so excited to kind
of jump into this first episode of the New Year series,
perhaps the first episode of twenty twenty three. It's going
(02:41):
to be an amazing year, and what a great way
to kick it off with a discussion about New Year's resolutions.
So let's get into it and learn all that there
is to know about New Year's resolutions and hopefully learn
how we can apply some of the theory some of
the psychology to our own goals so that we can
(03:02):
be successful at the end of the day. So, of course,
as we always do at the beginning of each episode,
we want to break down some of the history behind
New Year's resolutions and get our basics down pat before
(03:22):
jumping into the psychology and the explanations behind why this concept,
this idea of making promises to ourselves at the beginning
of the new year, why it even exists. So the
origin of making New Year's resolutions, it rests with the Babylonians.
For those of you who do not know who these
people are, I didn't know who they were, but they
(03:43):
were an ancient group of people who lived in present
day Iraq from I think like two thousand to four
hundred b c. And many historians trace the beginnings and
the existence of New Year's resolutions back to this group.
So these people would reportedly make promises to the gods
(04:05):
in hopes that they would earn good favor in the
coming year. So, for example, they might make a promise
that they're going to have the most successful harvest they've
ever seen, or be a really good partner or a
really good husband or wife, and by succeeding in that
by fulfilling that goal, that ambition, they almost demonstrated to
(04:27):
the gods that they were true to their word, that
they were had integrity, that they were good people, and
as a result they would receive good favor good karma
from these same gods. Although I don't think that we
make our modern day resolutions to the gods per se,
the new year is still and obviously a very important
(04:49):
and somewhat spiritual time that represents so many things, but
mostly new beginnings, the future, or a new chapter in
our lives. Interestingly, this is I think a very common meaning.
It's applied across different cultures. The month of January is
actually named after the god Janus, who was the god
(05:13):
of new beginnings, So we can see that there is
this reverence placed on the new year throughout many cultures
and throughout many time periods. I think as humans we
really crave the comfort of meaning and tradition, and the
new year is able to bring both of these things
and offer somewhat of a dedicated time for reflection and
(05:36):
contemplation of what we want from this new period of
our lives. And you know, it often involves a pretty
big celebration as well, you know, fireworks, champagne and all
of that. But more than that, I think it provides
a dedicated time for looking back, feeling grateful, nostalgic, and
(05:58):
perhaps also thinking about what it is about our lives
that may be missing, something where we feel we may
be lacking or dissatisfied, where we can improve, whilst also
being hopeful for the future and invest it in the
ways that we can better ourselves. We tend to set
(06:19):
resolutions at this time of the year because the New
Year in particular serves us this cyclical marker of time
during which we can reevaluate and take inventory on our lives,
and the drive for making resolutions is very much motivated
by this punctuation in time, which activates our hopes and
(06:40):
our expectations for what we want to achieve going forward.
So this psychologist, her name is doctor Strongen. She had
a really good explanation for this that I thought would
be super relevant when we're talking about why it is
that the new year really sparks this desire to change
up our lives, and she says that the New Year
what it does is gives us kind of a sense
(07:02):
of renewal and It causes us to think about areas
in our lives where we want to improve. And this
kind of distinct start of a new chapter of a
new year, you know, the clock kind of ticks over
into a new calendar. It feels like a natural time
to make this change. There is really no better time
than the beginning of a new year. And I think
(07:24):
this is the marvel and also the significance of a
new year for making massive changes to our everyday lives
and I guess our overall lifestyle. When we think of
New Year's resolutions, I think a few typical categories or
examples often come to mind, and there's actually been research
(07:48):
on this on these very categories, these common categories that
we see. So this woman, Kaitlin Woolley from Cornell, she
did some research into New Year's resolutions and she wanted
to find out what were the most common types of resolutions.
I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, but
(08:08):
the majority, overwhelmingly. I think it was as high as
like fifty five fifty six percent of resolutions were health related,
so wanting to exercise more, eat healthy, lose weight. Those
were by far the most common New Year's resolutions. Reported.
Then we have work related and financial related kind of
(08:32):
resolutions at about thirty five percent, So a lot of
people reported that they are going into the new year
wanting to save money, get out of debt, get organized
by a house, these kind of financial and work related
ambitions that they have. And then we also have these
social goals. These accounted for about five to ten percent overall.
(08:53):
You know, goals like spending more time with family, making
more friends, making time for romance, going on dates, meeting
a partner. These were also a pretty big category of
New Year's resolutions. I don't think I was surprised at
all to hear how many resolutions or goals we make
at the start of the new year have to do
(09:16):
with our physical health and our physical appearance, mainly just
because I think it is a huge source of just
general insecurity for many of us, for many many people,
and these goals can be super varied, but they're often
focused on things like feeling better in our bodies, maybe
being able to accomplish a certain physical feit like a
(09:37):
half marathon. Sometimes they have a lot to do with
our eating and our diet, but of course also on
how we look. Fitness is obviously a part of this,
but I definitely have a bit of a bone to
pick with goals that are focused on weight loss, just
because I actually think they're really hard to achieve, especially
(09:59):
with the pressure and the hype of a new year.
We get so excited about this. We imagine how we're
going to look, you know, what it's going to feel like.
We don't understand the investment that it sometimes takes. And
I've been seeing New Year's resolutions about weight loss everywhere
all over my TikTok right now, and it's kind of
(10:19):
what inspired me to do this episode because I began
thinking about my own New Year's expectations or goals for
twenty twenty three, and I can honestly say, I think
this is the first year that my New Year's resolutions
are not focused on what I look like or you know,
(10:41):
my body, which is like so shocking to me. I
think that they have been focused on that for as
long as I can remember. There's no shame if that
is your New Year's resolution. You know, it's your body,
it's your choice. As long as you're going into it
with a healthy and sustainable mindset, go for it. It's
honestly your life and if that's going to make you happier,
(11:03):
that's fantastic that you have, you know, decided to focus
on that for your health and as an element of
your health for twenty twenty three. But I think there
are other health goals as well that are perhaps more
achievable and I would say more holistic. You know, maybe
your New Year's resolution is to stop drinking or to
drink less. That's one of mine next year. I really,
(11:25):
I honestly do not have the time to be hungover
as much as I was last year, and I just
kind of want to cut back. So that's one of
my news resolutions. Another one I see quite often is
to like walk ten thousand steps a day. I think
these are like that one in particular, that ten thousand
step one is a lot more achievable than setting some
(11:48):
obscure weight loss goal because it's achievable, it can be
integrated into your life, and it affects so much more
than just you know, the number on a scale. It
affects the time we spent outdoors, it affects how we
feel in our body, it affects our cardiovascular health. So
I think it's a much more well rounded goal. Another
(12:10):
big category that, obviously I'm a huge fan of is
the mental health resolutions, the mental health goals. These are
mainly focused on our emotional wellbeing and the things that
we can do to shift our mindset and our mental perspective.
You know, there are the normal ones, like going to therapy,
(12:31):
trying to perhaps prioritize your boundaries and your space, but
there are some others that I think are fantastic, like
reducing your screen time. Our exposure to social media and
to just the Internet and screens in general can have
such a strange and nuanced effect on our mental health.
(12:53):
So I think reducing screen time is such a fantastic
goal if that is your priority, reading more, that's an
amazing one, it's highly achievable. And another one I saw
was to get at least twenty minutes of sun or
outdoors time a day. That is such an amazing New
Year's resolution. Honestly, it's so easy to integrate into our lives,
(13:15):
especially if you live somewhere like Australia, where you know
the weather is sometimes bad but in general most of
the time bearable. And it also allows us to incorporate
many of the health benefits of being in nature. So
I think that if that is something you want to
focus on, what an amazing goal. A couple others, just
(13:37):
to briefly mention, we talked about financial goals, you know,
saving for a particular reason, maybe you want to buy
a house or go on a big trip. And then
there are some other like niche goals and achievements like
I don't know, wanting to climb everest, or to knit
fifty mini jackets for your cats, start a business, start
a podcast. That one sounds pretty familiar, and these kind
(14:00):
of goals are often super unique and I would say
not shared by many people, which at times, on one hand,
I think can make it harder to form community, but
it also makes it so much more worthwhile because fewer
people have that goal and achieving it is going to
be so much more sweet and such an amazing feeling.
(14:24):
Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. I honestly think
that any facet of our lives where we're perhaps not
quite satisfied or fulfilled or would like to do better,
can be made into a goal. And sometimes the significance
of a new year, of a new leaf and new chapter,
(14:45):
but also the explicit kind of start date and point
from which to track our progress can be a huge
enabler of our success. But let's now tackle the psychology
behind how we can and create realistic years resolutions and
almost offer a bit of an equation for success so
(15:07):
that we can start twenty twenty three with the best
versions of ourselves in mind. So we have explained some
of the history, the categories, the traditions behind New Year's resolutions,
But now to the psychology. What is it about the
(15:30):
new year that causes us to have these elaborate and
grand expectations for ourselves to set these resolutions. I think
as humans we are naturally and innately very attuned to
self improvement. It is very much part of our complexity
and a unique aspect of our species that we have
(15:52):
this capacity to consider the future and ourselves within it,
and with that we tend to imagine versions of ourselves
that do not yet exist, ones that might be better.
Because of this unique ability, we're able to set goals
and objectives that lead to better versions of ourselves. That
(16:15):
is the premise of New Year's resolutions. The idea, though
of a New Year's resolution, it tends to rest on
three fairly important psychological concepts. The first being personal development,
the second being self efficacy, and finally the idea of
social norms personal development. It's all about looking inward and
(16:41):
focusing on the ways to better yourself. It's so obvious
how that has a relationship to New Year's resolutions, but
essentially this focus allows us to increase our self awareness,
our self esteem, and to fulfill future aspirations that we
may have for our lives. When we make a New
(17:02):
Year's resolution, whatever it may be, we are channeling our
personal development and our focus on personal growth, and kind
of channeling that in a way that allows us to
be productive and to live a more fulfilled than satisfying life.
Without this ability or the skills to reflect inwards and upwards,
(17:26):
we can remain fairly stagnant and unsatisfied with our lives,
which is why the new year is such an important
time to make certain promises to ourselves, because they are
focused on improving our lives in order to enhance the
overall quality. So even if we don't fully realize our goals,
the very act I think of just reflecting on where
(17:48):
we want to improve, where we want to be putting
energy towards that is so valuable because not only does
it mean that we have a sense of the future
and a sense of meaning, but we also have a
desire to be better, which is in itself a very
inherently valuable idea to have. The second psychological concept that
(18:11):
I think is perhaps even more important to consider in
the context of New Year's resolutions is self efficacy. So
self efficacy is at the very core, perhaps the central
pillar to establishing goals for ourselves in the new year. Essentially,
it refers to our belief in our capacity to execute
(18:35):
the behaviors necessary to produce specific outcomes. So, just to
break that down a little bit more, it essentially encompasses
our confidence that our behavior and our actions will be
able to exert an influence over our environment and over
our future, so that we can achieve our goals. Without
(18:59):
self efficacy, without this belief in our ability to alter
our lives, the idea of a New Year's resolution, it
literally wouldn't exist. It wouldn't be anything but wishful thinking.
That is what distinguishes the New Year's resolution from just,
you know, a fantasy. It's that acknowledgment that what we
(19:20):
want for our lives will require our effort, and therefore
this belief that our actions, our behaviors will actually have
some influence over whether or not we achieve a certain goal.
You know, without self efficacy, why would why would we
even try? There's no point trying. I think virtually all
(19:41):
people can identify some form of goal that they have. However,
they think. Where we go wrong is that most of
us don't always think about the fact that putting these
plans into action isn't as simple as we think, and
self efficacy is going to play a major role and
(20:01):
how we approach this goal and how we approach this challenge.
You know, people with stronger self efficacy, they often recover
really quickly from setbacks. They make a plan, they view
problems as something to be mastered, and they really are
a lot more invested in their goals and they're invested
(20:21):
in the activities that they are required to do to
achieve these goals. In contrast, we see people who have
lower or weaker self efficacy tend to really avoid some
of the challenging tasks and behaviors that are required. They
focus a lot on the potential of failure and on
(20:42):
the negative outcomes, and they quickly lose confidence in their
personal abilities. Right like they don't feel confident that they
have the agency, they have the strength, they have the
skills necessary to achieve their goal. Obviously, if you have
(21:03):
set an ambitious New Year's resolution, whatever it may be,
a strong sense of self efficacy is going to be
a great asset to achieving this goal. And importantly, self
efficacy it's not something you're born with, right, It's actually
something that you can develop and train within yourself. And
(21:23):
there are a few ways to do that. Firstly, by
celebrating your successes, by really consciously recognizing instances in which
you have been able to influence your destiny or change
an outcome, modeling and observing the behaviors and stories of others,
having those positive role models or mentors to kind of
(21:46):
show you that this is possible. And another way is
to seek out positive feedback and positive affirmations. Obviously, when
you hear positive feedback from others, that can really help
improve your sense of self efficacy, and not only that,
but your sense that you are actually achieving your goal,
(22:07):
that it is recognizable from the perspective of other people.
You know, if your therapist tells you that you're doing
a really good job at prioritizing your mental health. That's
setting boundaries. That's going to be so encouraging and it's
going to make you want to keep going. But in contrast,
(22:29):
and on the other hand, negative feedback negative comments can
also have a pretty powerful undermining effect. So be conscious
about who you share your goals and ambitions with. I
don't think there is anything more demoralizing than someone telling
you that what you're doing is not worth it, or
(22:50):
that you're going to fail. It's such a terrible, terrible feeling.
So if you want to succeed, you have to create
a supportive environment that contains people who really believe in
your abilities and they believe in your success. Finally, making
a New Year's resolution, it's somewhat of a social norm
(23:10):
these days, right, like a social norm being these kind
of informal rules or expectations that we have. It's very
much influenced by what we see other people doing. It
gets to December early January and people start talking about
their New Year's resolutions, and we feel like we should
(23:30):
probably have a few of our own. This is not
a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it's
one of the more positive social norms that we've discussed
on the show, because, as we said, the primary reason
for setting this kind of goal at the start of
the year is for self growth, So as long as
we're not harming anyone, they seem to be overall a
(23:51):
pretty positive thing. Well at least that's what we think
is the case. But it might actually be that New
Year's resolutions are neither positive or negative, especially when we
consider how many of us and how many of our
resolutions end up failing. And that is what I want
(24:12):
to discuss next. Why is it that so many of
our ambitions for the new year end up being forgotten
by the second or third week of January. Every year,
in early January, millions and millions of us resolve to
(24:36):
change something about our lives, change something about our behavior,
whether it is to get really fit, to eat better,
to save money, spend more time with our friends, whatever
it is, there is no denying that most of us
have something in mind that we want to change in
twenty twenty three. Here is the sad reality though for
(25:00):
most of us, these New Year's resolutions are going to
fall by the wayside within a few weeks. The best
example I think of this of the early failure of
many resolutions is thinking about how busy your gym is
in the first weeks of January, yet by February they're
normally back to usual. That's because we often get wrapped
(25:23):
up in the excitement of setting the resolution, of imagining
the outcome without realizing how much commitment it can take.
The easiest step to making a year's resolution is telling
yourself that you're going to do it. Is making that
promise and imagining the success, imagining your future body, or
(25:44):
your future financial situation, or your amazing life, especially in
that moment before we actually have to do some of
the work. It is very easy to fantasize, but for
anyone who's actually set a new year's resolution, it's a
lot harder to actually achieve that goal because it requires
(26:06):
often a lot of tedious and persistent work. I don't
really think it's even a goal right if it's easy
to achieve. That's part of the allure of New Year's
resolutions is that they are really large and grand and significant,
and they require that significance of the new year in
order to begin. There are quite a few reasons they
(26:29):
want to discuss as to why it's so difficult to
stick to our new year's resolutions, and many of these
explanations have some pretty fascinating psychology attached. Firstly, a large
amount of our daily behaviors tend to be motivated by
what we see as unconscious and automatic habits that have
(26:53):
in many ways been ingrained in us since our childhood,
since our teenage years. We unconsciously reach for the same
types of food, we wake up at the same time,
we see this same people, We use the same forms
of transport because these actions and these behaviors have become
(27:14):
so habitual, and it makes it really difficult to change.
And over time, these repetitive ways of behaving tend to
become very much automatically queued by the situations that we're in,
and they're completely independent from our deliberate thought processes. So
much of what we do on a day to day
(27:36):
basis we do without thinking. When we set a news resolution, though,
that is a very deliberate, a very conscious action, a
very conscious thought, and it can be really difficult to
integrate this conscious and deliberate thing we want to achieve
into our daily lives, and into our daily lives that
(27:59):
are filled with automatic behaviors and unconscious habits because they
are so hard to integrate. And because a lot of
our resolutions often require almost rewriting or rewiring our automatic behaviors,
it takes a lot of conscious energy to uphold these resolutions,
(28:20):
which is why they often fail. This explains why achieving
our New Year's resolutions it's not just about pure determination.
It's not just about how much you want it. The
act of achieving any goal requires a lot of intense,
concentrated energy, and more than that, it requires rewriting unconscious
(28:45):
behaviors you've probably followed for years and years and years.
Often we don't really map out or think about what
it's going to take to accomplish a goal, and instead
we rely very much so on that excitement of the
new year as the thing that's going to push us
to accomplish this goal. This buzz, this excitement, this expectation,
(29:07):
and then that buzz wears off, or maybe you realize
that actually you set a few unrealistic expectations for yourself.
For example, you know, if you've decided that twenty twenty
three you're going to run a marathon, and you've bought
tickets for a race in April, it's highly unlikely that
(29:28):
you're going to do that. You really set yourself up
to fail because you haven't been honest or realistic with yourself.
The cycle of making and subsequently breaking resolutions, it boils
down to one core issue or concept, and that is honesty.
(29:50):
Being honest with yourself about what it is you want,
why you want to achieve it, and how achievable it is.
So before you set your alution for twenty twenty three,
it's really important to ask yourself some of those core
questions and be honest with yourself in answering them. Why
(30:10):
is it that this goal is important to you and
how do you imagine it's going to make your life better?
Really really think about that. Is the outcome of your resolution?
Is it going to be enough to motivate you to
do the things that you need to do, and is
(30:31):
that final end goal something that is achievable? Honestly, It's
also important to reflect on the times when you've tried
in the past to achieve this thing or to pursue
this change and what went wrong. You know, maybe last
year you wanted to wake up at seven am every day,
but you didn't think about the fact that you work
(30:52):
a nine to five, or that a lot of your
socializing happens in the evening. So think about why you failed.
Think about what it wo was about your environment, about
your surroundings that made it difficult to accomplish this goal.
We often, you know, set lofty goals for the future
without seriously and honestly assessing why we've probably struggled in
(31:13):
the past, and without examining where we are resistant to change.
That cycle of that, you know, that psycle of excitement
and resolve and then failure continues to repeat. It's also
really important to be honest about what else is going
to have to change in your life to meet your
goal and to meet your resolution. We often think about
(31:36):
our New Year's resolutions as a pretty isolated desire or
an isolated dream, without recognizing the lifestyle change that they
are going to require. The one I always think of
is the new Year's resolution to quit drinking. And that's
one of mine for this year, quitting you know, to
quit drinking, quitting alcohol. It sounds simple enough, right you know,
(32:00):
you just say no, you just don't drink. And when
you think about it on an individual basis, when you're
home by yourself, it sounds pretty achievable, right, Like, it
sounds fairly simple, but then you have to think about
it in terms of the other contexts in our lives
in which alcohol is present and how much it tends
(32:21):
to dominate social occasions and celebrations. Are you going to
be okay with not drinking during these times or maybe
missing out because of this choice? And are you going
to be able to make the changes to your overall
lifestyle to enact this goal. By asking ourselves these questions
(32:42):
and also answering them honestly, we're actually setting ourselves up
for success because we can alter our resolutions and be
more realistic from the get go, and therefore more likely
to succeed. There are, of course, some other reasons why
we typically fail our news for sos. Just to list
(33:03):
off a couple, Sometimes we just lack accountability. You know,
it's very easy to fail if the only person you're
going to disappoint is yourself. Sometimes our goal doesn't allow
for small wins, so we give up because we don't
see any progress. Maybe it is a lack of planning,
or the stakes are just too low, And sometimes it's
(33:25):
just about self doubt and not believing that we're able
to do them. We're not able to achieve what we
set our minds to With all of that in mind,
I really want to turn to our final point for
this episode, and perhaps the most significant, how can we
actually be successful with all of this information and knowledge
(33:46):
in mind? What can we learn from our failures so
that we can see through our resolutions we can make
the change that we want to in our lives. Luckily
for us, there is quite a lot of research on this,
and so I've gathered a few tips for us to
all share and to hopefully learn from. Firstly, start small.
(34:12):
Creating smaller goals that are practical and don't restrict you
too much is going to be so much more achievable
because those goals and the actions required to meet them
are not going to disrupt your life as much. Think
about all of those automatic behaviors that we were talking
about before. Undermining them and rewriting them takes a lot
(34:33):
of effort. But if we start out small, you know,
maybe by initially trying to exercise just for five minutes
out of the day, of just trying to replace certain
foods that are making us feel unwell, it's a lot
easier to integrate into our lives rather than trying to
completely shift our lifestyle overnight. These resolutions are also be
(34:54):
easier for you to stick to because you're not going
to feel like you're missing out, and you'll still be
able to move closer to your big goal. Sometimes I
think we get so excited and we are so impatient
that we just rush to the finish line, and what
ends up happening is that it's a not very sustainable
and we just end up failing because any kind of
(35:16):
massive life change is going to take so much energy.
Similar to this is ensuring that your goals are clearly defined.
I think often we set these very big, sweeping goals
and we make these big statements like I want to
be healthier, or I want to make new friends, or
(35:36):
I want to be more successful. But unfortunately those goals,
as amazing as they sound, they're not very clear, and
it's hard to hold yourself accountable if you don't really
have a vision or an idea of success in mind.
So making sure that you know exactly what it is
(35:56):
you're working for you create a resolution so that you
can actionably see when you're getting closer to the end
outcome is going to really help you. In a similar
Vein to both of those things, I think also limiting
yourself to a few resolutions, maybe just one, is also
going to be really really helpful and really enable your success.
(36:19):
It's really tempting to do these big to do lists
and to have all these really insane expectations for what
we're capable of doing. Maybe you're someone who can handle
that amount of pressure and that many things on your mind,
but most of us can't really focus on a huge
list at once. It's better to break it down into
(36:40):
maybe just one or one or two goals that we
really want to achieve, and that way when not as
easily overwhelmed and as frustrated, and we can integrate those
goals into our life a bit better. If we've decided,
you know, I want to exercise more, and then I
want to eat better, and then I want to be
more sustainable, and I want to spend money better, that
(37:02):
is a lot. That is a lot, So maybe try
and find a goal that links all of them. Like
walking to work that is sustainable. It's a great exercise,
and it saves you money because you don't have to
pay for petrol or pay for transport. Another few tips
that I kind of gathered was to be realistic. I
think we've talked about that already find community and with
(37:26):
that accountability. If your goal is shared, you're able to
relate to others who are going through similar things or
facing similar setbacks. And also you feel accountable and you're
excited to pursue the goal because you have community surrounding it.
Find a way to track your progress and see the
(37:46):
small wins. When we set a big goal and it's
in the future and it's going to take a lot
for us to get there, we can become disheartened quite
easily because we don't see any output from our efforts.
So find a way to track your progress or to
give yourself some small wins to motivate you along the way.
(38:08):
One way that I do this is I create kind
of like a visual vision board or a resource to
think about what I want to achieve and why. And
it helps me keep focused and really visualize the outcome
that I want and why I want it. It's been
so helpful. I do this at the start of most years,
where I create like a bit of a collage about
(38:31):
where I see my year going. It's firstly a really
great way to reflect and see what it is that
I've realized about that, but it also makes it really
clear to me about what it is I'm working towards,
and I don't lose sight in all the chaos of
our day to day lives. Finally, it's so important to
(38:51):
be mindful, take responsibility for your actions, and to stay committed,
but also not get too wrapped up in one goal, right.
You want your life to be enjoyable, and often if
you put all your eggs in one basket, if you're
too dedicated, if you go about it really intensely, you're
not going to be successful because you're just going to
be exhausted and you're going to lose motivation really really fast.
(39:16):
So start with a picture of your future self in mind.
Make that image big and bright, Imagine what it feels like,
Imagine how you feel, and hold that really deeply. Hold
on to it as a daily reminder for what you
are working for and why you're working towards. That change
your phone background or something about your environment that reminds
(39:37):
you of your goal every day. I saw this really
interesting quote. I think it's a great thing to share
to end up to you. To wrap up this episode,
winners and losers have the same goals. It's all about
who is most consistent. You're allowed to have setbacks, you're
allowed to have failures, but if you keep working out
(40:00):
it day by day, you just aim to be one
percent better every day. It's going to be achievable, and
I wish you the best of luck. I hope that
you're successful. How amazing to be setting new Year's resolutions.
I am so excited for the new year and all
that's going to come with it. It's going to be
a big year for the podcast and I cannot thank
you enough for supporting me throughout twenty twenty two. So
(40:22):
thank you to all the new listeners, to everyone who's shared,
to everyone who's messaged me and followed me. I am
so grateful and I cannot wait to push this even
further and do so many amazing things in the new year.
If you enjoyed this episode, if you think that other
people would enjoy it as well, please feel free to
leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever
(40:46):
you get your podcasts. It really helps the show to
grow and to reach new people, So if you feel
called to do so, it makes a huge difference. And yeah,
I would love I'd be very grateful if you would
do that. And if you're interested in seeing more of
my content, please follow our Instagram at that Psychology Podcast.
(41:06):
Often I let listeners of the show decide the episodes
that I publish for the week, So if that is
something you are interested in, please give us a follow
and participate in the community that way. Thank you again
for listening. Good luck. If you've said a New Year's resolution,
I'm sure you're going to do amazing and I will
see you next week for a new episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.