How Can We Make Better Resolutions?

Humans have been making New Years' resolutions for millennia, but we're still bad at keeping them. Learn some science behind building better resolutions in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and the concept of creating New Year's
resolutions is so ingrained in US culture that the government
keeps a list of popular resolutions and resources for achieving them.
It's a Baker's dozen of good intentions, including drink less alcohol,
eat healthy food, get a better education, get a better job,

(00:23):
get fit, managed debt, managed stress, and recycle. Additional research
backs up this list's universality. According to a eleven Marst
University poll, losing weight to top the list for one
in five resolution making Americans closely followed by exercising more,
with spending less and saving more, Quitting smoking, and being
a better person all tied for third. But is it

(00:46):
true that most people don't keep their resolutions? The answer,
as many of us around the house to Fork's office
were relieved to discover, appears to be a resounding yes.
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author with a penchant for
mass participation, exp yeraments found that of people making New
Year's resolutions were confident that they'd stick it out, yet
only a scant twelve percent really did. So why bother

(01:10):
a new year's resolutions are as one author wrote, a
triumph of hope over experience. They're a way to quantify
what we wish for ourselves. There are means of cataloging
our personal dissatisfactions, and perhaps most importantly, their method of
erasing errors of the past year. Yes, new year's resolutions
are all about hopefulness, and it's always been that way.

(01:32):
Of course, ringing in the new year isn't a construct
of modern Americans. Some four thousand years ago, Babylonians rang
in their new year with an eleven day festival in March. An.
Ancient Egyptians celebrated the advent of their new calendar during
the Nile Rivers annual flood. By four to six b c. E.
Roman Emperor Julius Caesar had moved the first day of
the year to January one, in honor of the Roman
god of beginnings, Janice, an idea that took some time

(01:55):
to catch on. However, In two c E. Pope Gregory
the eight brought the January first new year back in
vogue with the Gregorian calendar, a concept that persists today.
The origin of making New Year's resolutions rests with the Babylonians,
who reportedly made promises to the gods and hopes that
earn good favor in the coming year. They often resolved

(02:15):
to get out of debt. Sound familiar. Many of us
are still making that resolution today, So what's the secret
to actually keeping it? Just wanting something to change is
not enough. You need a strategy to make it stick.
One way to do this is to share your resolution
with others. We spoke with Joe Ferrari, professor of psychology
at DePaul University in Chicago. As he pointed out, when

(02:37):
you keep resolutions a secret, no one is going to
check up on you. You're only accountable to yourself. He
says that a party to publicly share your resolutions is
an admirable way to ring in the new year. Social
media offers another avenue to let others in on your goals.
But once you've involved others in your resolutions, what steps
can you take to ensure that when they do check
up on you, you'll have something positive to report the

(03:00):
success of your New year's resolutions starts in your head.
Limiting yourself to a few resolutions, maybe even one, and
being specific are a few things to keep in mind.
This prevents overload and frustration. For example, I want to
lose ten pounds by March first, or I want to
save fifty dollars of each paycheck. The best goals are
challenging but manageable, and that's a sensitive balance that only

(03:21):
you can find for yourself. Overly ambitious goals can drain
a person's confidence when they're not met. Instead, build on small,
observable victories and possibly achieve bigger goals down the line,
and take things on one at a time. Whatever goals
you do tackle, be sure to monitor your progress. Ferrari said,
if your resolution is to lose weight, check your weight regularly.

(03:42):
If it's to save money, right down where you've spent
your money, monitoring those few challenging goals you set will
dramatically improve your success rate. Sometimes just the act of
recording everything you eat or spend can cause you to
eat or spend less, even if you don't consciously change
anything else. Whatever your new year's goals, give yourself some
time to make them a reality, more time than you

(04:03):
may have planned on. Actually, while most people cling to
the widespread belief that new habits can be formed in
twenty one days, new research is suggesting that we need
a longer timetable. One recent study found that it took
participants in average of sixty six days to do something
different and stick with it. Today's episode was written by

(04:25):
Laurel Dove and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on
this and lots of other fresh topics, visit our home
planet as stuff works dot com