Hayden Brown: How to stick with your New Year's resolutions

A study by Strava found that only 8-9% of people stick to their New Year's resolution until the end of the year, and over half give it up by the second Friday of the month. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
So yes, that time again where you write a long
list of things you'd like to achieve in the new
year ahead and put together a vision board of how
your life should look by twenty twenty seven, and you
try to change yourself. A study by Strata found that
only eight to nine percent of people stick to their
new year's resolutions until the end of the year. It's
so uncommon that the second Friday of the year is

(00:37):
actually known as Quitter's Day. So how do you stick
with your goals? This is information you need from Hayden Brown,
a human behavior specialist. Hayden, good morning to.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
You, Good morning Andrews. How you doing good?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Is it really that rare to stick to your resolutions?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Look? Absolutely it is, And the problem seems to be
it really comes down to actually understanding ourselves and most
of us, in fact, all of us and you live
by a certain set of values or a cudent set
of priority. So the things that are the most important
are now ask to leave most important in our life,
and very often what we do is we set goals

(01:13):
or put expectations on ourself without really auditing, you know,
what is truly important to us. And so essentially we're
setting these goals that may sound good out loud, but
very often they don't really have an intrinsic meaning or
purpose to us. You know, there's many things, of course
that we all perhaps know we should do or could
be good for us, i e. You know, health and fitness.

(01:35):
You know, maybe certain savings or investing and these candy
great things. But of course if they don't have a
real purpose to us as an individual, then we'll just
get we'll get too busy, or we'll procrastinate as we
automatically prioritize five priority of things. So I think really
the first thing is understanding ourself.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Andrew, you're a human behavior specialist. The new year's resolution
I want to make is to keep my new year's resolution.
So the question I'm going to ask you is what's
the trick?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah? Absolutely, So the trick is associating some more purpose
to the actual goal that you're setting. Now, what I
really mean by that is actually understanding precisely how it
would change your life or precisely how it would benefit you. So,
for example, Let's say that that I'm setting a goal again,

(02:24):
going back to the health and fitness side of things,
obviously a common or cliche one this time of year.
Rather than me just saying I'd like to lose Team Kilo,
perhaps I think a little bit bigger, a little bit
bigger picture about Andrew. Perhaps I think about do I
have grandkids? Do I want to be around longer? You know,
is there certain travel or experiences I want to do?
And starting to reflect on actually what are the priorities

(02:45):
in my life and connecting the dots on how a
certain health and fitness goal would help fulfill these other
areas of your life i e. You know, being a
bit more mobile for the grandkids, I e. You know,
being able to travel a bit more you know, when
we retire, et cetera. So really not putting these just
ideals on ourselves that sound good out loud, I should
lose some weight, but actually creating some mental image and

(03:08):
some real association, some real truths on how the goal
actually benefits the other things in our life that are important,
because if we can connect those dots, then we're going
to be more engaged and have more buy into it,
and we're not going to give up at the first hurdle.
If we're setting goals that aren't truly important to us,
we're going to give up at the first hurdle. That first,
that first pain.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, that is very good advice. I'll drink to that. Actually, no,
i won't drink to that, because that's my New Year's resolution.
So there we go. Hayden Brown, human behavior Specialists.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
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