How To Set New Year's Resolutions and Stick With ThemMark Dombeck, Ph.D. Updated: Dec 31st 2007 Did you know that the meaning of the phrase "auld lang syne" is (roughly) "times gone by"? That when we sing "We'll drink a cup of kindness for auld lang syne" we are saying that we'll have a drink in memory of old times? I didn't know the actual translation until just now, having just looked it up, but like me, you may have previously guessed at the meaning from the context of the song. It just makes sense. New years is traditionally a time of reflection. As we look inward and think on the state of our lives, we inevitably think about the things about ourselves we'd like to change. In the best tradition of the holiday, we then set new year's resolutions with the intention of changing ourselves for the better in the coming year.
Despite everyone's best intentions, we all know what tends to happen next. We give up on our resolutions (usually sometime in February) and give up on changing ourselves until the following year. Why does this unfortunate turn of events so often tend to happen? The problem is usually not that the goals people wish to accomplish with their new year's resolutions are bad. Quite the contrary, common new year's resolutions people make tend to center around accomplishing very good and useful goals. People typically want to lose weight (because they are overweight); they want to stop smoking; they want to spend more time with their children; they want to learn to play an instrument, they want to date more so as to end the year in a committed relationship, etc.. In general, people set resolutions that will help them transform themselves into people who are healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. Though people's resolution goals and intentions are sound, they get into trouble keeping new year's resolutions because they don't adequately plan for how they will accomplish their self-improvement goals. In the absence of a sound and solid self-help change plan, most self-help projects are doomed to failure. The reason this is so has to do with how hard it is for people to change their habits. People are creatures of habit. Habits are ingrained behavior patterns that people repeat over and over. Particular habits form because people find repeating certain behaviors again and again (like eating food, or sitting on the sofa watching television, or having a drink or a smoke) to be pleasing and conforming. The sheer frequency of repetition of these habits makes accomplishing them second nature; very little thought or energy needs to be expended in order to engage in ingrained habits. Typically, people can do them blindfolded. Following through on a new year's resolution typically means working to lay down new habits that will conflict with old ingrained habits. People typically want to lose weight, which means eating less than they are used to eating. People want to quit smoking which means smoking less (or not at all). People want to exercise, which means sitting on the comfortable sofa less. Setting new habits for yourself requires that you forgo your ingrained habits and engage in entirely new behaviors which require a lot of energy and thought to set in motion, and which are frequently not very comforting. Not eating when you want to eat, or smoke when you want to smoke, or sit on your bottom when you want to sit on your bottom is uncomfortable. It takes energy and a continuing act of will in order to not engage in your familiar comfortable behaviors. One slip in your continuing will; one day when you don't have the energy to put into following your new habits rather than your old ones; and you tend to fall back into your old comfortable habits. Those old habits are easy, while your attempts to change take active work to accomplish. All you have to do is relax and you will find yourself back engaging in your old habits, unfortunately. Though people really do want the benefits they expect to gain from engaging in new habits and behaviors, they are seldom prepared at an emotional level to do the constant work required to accomplish those benefits. In the heat of the moment, when things get emotional or painful or uncomfortable or inconvenient, people tend to just say "Screw it! This is just too difficult" and they give up. It doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to set new year's resolutions and follow through on them successfully. In order to make this happen, however, it is necessary to set up a careful and well thought out change plan, one which is concrete, limited in scope, and realistic, and which makes use of methods for self-change which are likely to actually work, in advance of starting out to accomplish your self-improvement goal. Armed with such a plan, you are far more likely to meet with success in your self-help efforts. Measure Twice, Cut Once Here are some guidelines for setting up a workable self-improvement plan capable of helping you actually follow through on your new year's resolutions. Start by answering this question, "Is this the best time for me to be making life changes?" Setting up a self-improvement program will take a lot of energy and attention, so it is best to pursue such a program during times of your life when you are not heavily committed to putting your energy and attention into other projects. If you have a crunch project at work for the next month that requires you to work weekends and evenings, now is not necessarily the best time to also start work on eliminating your smoking habit, for instance. You don't want to put positive change projects on hold too long, but it's okay to delay the start of a self-improvement project if you know that conditions more favorable to your success are around the corner. It is easier to win a battle when you get to pick favorable terms of combat. The next thing to do is to prioritize. List all the various self-help projects that you'd like to take on and then rank them in order of importance from most important to least important. Make your resolution be that you will take on only the one most important self-help project right now. The others can wait for another day. By selecting only one self-help project you keep your goals simple and clear and avoid the confusion and overwhelm that comes from trying to take on too much at once. Determining which of your self-help projects is most important can be tricky as there is more than one basis on which to judge importance. We recommend that you prioritize your goals on multiple bases at once. For instance, if you need to lose weight for health reasons (because you are seriously overweight) AND you feel ashamed of being overweight and would like to reduce that feeling of shame you carry around all the time, then losing weight might be a highly ranked goal. Some people need to lose weight for medical reasons, but don't have a problem with their weight from a personal perspective. While it is still important that such a person lose weight for health reasons, he or she is likely to have less real motivation to make that happen than someone who is bothered by weight. Some other goal (like stopping smoking) that the person feels more passionate about might be a better place to start under the circumstances. The more personally motivated you are to meet your task, the better are your chances of sticking with your self-help project until you've achieved results. Having settled on a single self-help goal, you next need to refine your goal so that it becomes realistic: something you can actually accomplish. It is of no use to say, "I want to lose weight", because that goal has no end specified. Implicit in the idea of losing weight is that you will eventually arrive at a place where you are done. If this end point never gets set, what you have is an eating disorder, rather than a diet. Part of making a weight loss goal realistic means setting a concrete weight loss goal; some figure which will indicate when your goal has been completed. Some amount of research on your part is generally necessary to figure out how you can best address and meet your goal. You must figure out what methods are best to use in order to accomplish your goal, and, as well, you must figure out how you will measure progress you make towards meeting your goal. As an example of the importance of selecting good methods, consider that there are many different ways that someone can embark on a weight loss project. Often people will put themselves on a diet, and they will also start an exercise program, but there are other options too, such as hypnotherapy and surgery. Within any given class of method, there are also many options. Carb-restriction diets, such as the South Beach Diet have been popular in recent years, but there are many other options as well, including the perennial Weight Watchers program, Volumetrics, and many, many other options. Dieting is a complex matter. It is possible to lose weight by simply starving one's self, but this is very much a foolish and dangerous method that is unlikely to result in stable weight loss. Gradual approaches to dieting that emphasize proper nutrition are much safer and ultimately more effective alternatives to starvation. Research can help you learn what are important characteristics of an effective diet, and guide you towards the diet program that you ultimately choose to work with. You will always be best off selecting a method that has been subjected to scientific scrutiny and has been shown to be effective and safe. Other methods of scrutiny, such as reliance on testimonials, just don't cut it.  Most people understand the need to research methods, but they don't immediately see why measurement is important too. The reason is simple. If you cannot easily figure out how much progress you are making towards (or away from) your goal, you simply cannot determine when your goal has been met. Measurement allows you to visualize your progress. If you don't measure your progress on a regular basis, you simply cannot tell if you are making progress. If you do, your progress becomes crystal clear. The measurement most appropriate to a weight loss program is going to be weight (e.g., as measured in pounds or kilograms). Accurate measurements of weight are not difficult to come by; any bathroom scale will provide a reliable figure. It is not so important that your scale be accurate (e.g., capable of providing you with a number figure that is exactly calibrated to a weight standard), by the way. The reliability or repeatability of a measurement technique is far more important. If you step on your scale 10 times on a given morning, each time you do so, the readout should be the same. Weight is a physical dimension. It's harder to figure out how to measure behaviors, like exercise. Usually, people do a simple frequency count, when measuring behaviors, making a tally mark in a log each time they engage in the behavior (e.g., each time they exercise). Changes in mood can be difficult to measure as well as there is no reliable way to measure mood with a machine (at least not in a cost effective manner). Subjective internal states like feelings are typically measured using a self-report scale or questionnaire. A further aspect of refining your goal is to make sure that it is put into a form that is easily achievable. People lose heart when they find themselves exhausted and still not anywhere near the finish line of a race. The solution for this problem is to divide the race course into multiple short sprints, each with its own finish line. By subdividing the path towards the goal in this manner the same distance gets covered but motivation stays maximized. For example, many people come to dieting with the goal that they want to lose 30 pounds or more. While this is an admirable goal, it is too large of a goal to take on all at once. It is far better from a practical standpoint to divide such a large goal into multiple micro-goals, say of 5 pounds each. It is much easier to lose 5 pounds than 30 pounds; it takes less time and is much less frustrating to accomplish. While still keeping the larger goal of losing 30 pounds as an overarching theme, set as a more practical goal that you will lose 5 pounds, and then celebrate when you achieve that goal. Having reached that goal, set another micro-goal of losing another 5 pounds, and then celebrate when that goal has been achieved. You get to where you want to go when you divide your large goals up into smaller micro-goal steps, but each step is easier to meet than is losing all the weight at once in one impossibly long sprint. Still further refinements of your plan can be accomplished by building elements into your plan that will help prop you up in areas of life where you are not strong. If you are someone who can't stick with a self-improvement plan if left to your own devices, but do okay when you are required to show up at a scheduled class, then find a way to join a class. Even if a class costs more than trying to do it yourself, it will be money well spent, because the end result you desire will actually occur. Similarly, if you know that you will be more motivated to go to the gym and work out after having plunked down a huge entry fee, then join an expensive gym. Don't do that if a cheaper gym will meet your needs just fine and you also know that spending a fortune on an entry fee won't motivate you to actually go to the gym one way or another. If you've got a personal information manager (like a Treo, or Windows Mobile device), or a computer with a calendar on it, or just a calendar on your wall, record your goal-related appointments in that device or calendar. Set alarms on those events if you can so that you won't forget to do them. Having laid out the details of your plan, write them down so that you will remember them. Write down your micro-goal, as well as your starting point and the ending point that defines the moment when you will have met your current micro-goal. Write down how you will achieve your micro-goal by recording the method or methods you're going to use in the pursuit of your goal. If there is detail you can write down regarding what you must do in order to put those methods into action, then write down that detail. If meeting your goal requires your regular attendance at a class, or your regular practice of some behavior, write down those events on a schedule so that you can check them off as you go along. Finally, write down what sort of reward you will have for yourself when you meet your goal. Rewards should be something that makes you smile but also modest in nature and not something that will cause you to backslide. It's not a good idea to reward yourself with food or cigarettes if what you've been trying to accomplish is weight loss or smoking cessation. Post your written plan in a public place, and generally announce to people around you that you are going to be working on your plan. See if you can recruit them to help keep you motivated and honest. Measure your progress towards your goal, and (if you can stand it) post those measurements in a public place where people who care about you will see them. Making your measurements public promotes accountability and makes your self-improvement plan that much more of a hard-to-back-down-from commitment. It also may get people to start cheering for you. You may find that some people around you are more interested in cutting you down than cheering you on. Try to avoid such people. Who cares what they think. At this point, the foundation work has been done. You can stand on a foundation of this type and it will support your weight. Now you can start "building your house" so to speak, by setting your self-improvement plan into motion. Go forth and conquer! Executing your self-improvement plan is much easier to do when you've done your homework first, but changing your ingrained behavior is never an easy thing to do. You can help make the work easier to accomplish by nurturing your motivation to succeed. One of the best ways to do this is to connect with other people who are working on the same goal as yourself. Such people are usually a great source of support and motivation as they can readily empathize with your struggle from their own personal experience. You can also do some self-supporting as well by reflecting on your experience in working on your goal in a journal every evening or every couple of days. It is also important to do a little relapse prevention work with yourself. It is almost certain that your progress towards your goal will not be a straight line, but instead will consist of both progress and relapse back into the old behaviors you are trying to replace. Two steps forward and one step back, so to speak. It's important that you don't interpret moment of relapse as evidence of your failure. Relapse is not failure of your self-improvement project; it is just a relapse from which you can recover and then start making more forward progress again. Don't use relapse as an excuse to quit making progress towards your goal. Learn to identify triggers that draw you back towards old comfortable but ultimately unhealthy habits. Create alternative responses you can put into motion when you encounter triggers that can prevent you from backsliding. Keep air-popped popcorn around so that you snack on that rather than candy, if your trigger to snack is watching TV, for instance. Psychological Self-Tools Online Self-Help Book We've written an entire online self-help book on the subject of setting up workable self-help plans. If, after reading this essay, you'd like to learn more about how to set up a solid self-help plan for a self-improvement project you are contemplating, please visit our Psychological Self-Tools online self-help book. The book is set up in chapters. You can start from the beginning, or simply jump to the topic you want to read about most:
- Chapter 1 Self-Help: What is it? provides an introduction to the self-help process
- Chapter 2 – Understanding the nature of your problem explores the complicated problem many people have of trying to figure out what it is that they need to change in the first place.
- Chapter 3 – Overview of Bio-Psycho-Social Theories reviews the basic channels through which a problem can be addressed – by changing your physical body (biology), your thoughts or behavior (psychology), or your social environment (society).
- Chapter 4 – Meeting Basic Needs reviews Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and explores ways that people whose basic needs are not met can go about getting those needs met.
- Chapter 5 – Changing Behavior and Thought cover, as the title suggests, general methods you can use to change how you behave and how you think. General methods useful for changing habits are covered here.
- Chapter 6 – Changing Your Mood covers general methods you can use to change your emotional state such as helping yourself overcome depression or anxiety feelings.
- Chapter 7 – Changing Your Knowledge covers general methods you can use to change what you know; your skills and knowledge base. Learning new knowledge is often necessary for career advancement.
- Chapter 8 – Changing Your Relationships covers methods you can use to alter the state of your interpersonal relationships, such as making friends or standing up to bullies.
- Chapter 9 – Changing Your Identity and Motivation explores methods you can use to change the way you think about yourself. Methods for improving self-esteem and overcoming pessimism are reviewed here.
- Chapter 10 – Your Unique Self-Help Plan covers how to combine general change methods into a coherent and useful plan for addressing the specific issue you want to change.
- Chapter 11 – Specific Problems contains links for where you can read more about how to set up specific plans to address specific problems like weight loss, smoking, difficulty sticking with an exercise program, anxiety, dependency, dating worries, relationship problems, etc.
Happy New Year from Mental Help Net! May the coming year be a good one, and may you meet with every success as you undertake to work on your new year's resolutions. Goals tracking tool - Harry - Dec 27th 2008
Thanks, that's a great post! I'd like to recommand another cool web app specifically designed for
tracking goals and todo list, and time logging too is called GoalsOnTrack.com. It's free at http://www.goalsontrack.com. | 
Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. is Director of Mental Help Net (a public service of CenterSite.Net - a provider of website and internet services and educational content to employee assistance and behavioral health organizations), and a licensed Psychologist in the state of Ohio (License #5698).