A Periodical for the Psychologically Curious
By: Aaron Balick
Tags: Goals, Lifehacks, New Year Resolution, Self Help, Psychology

These days most people in the psychology world scoff at the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions. That’s because the research shows that you’ve only got around a 20% chance of meeting them. A second argument is that January 1st is an arbitrary date and that people could (and should) resolve to make changes on any day they choose. Well, in theory that is totally correct, but it is simply a human universal that when when the odometer hits 100,000 it’s much more satisfying than, say 86,942. Similarly, the first day of the year is a particularly good marker to start a new set of habits.

One of the major obstacles is that people often come up with their resolutions on January first under the influence of a hangover and after a week of over-indulgence. Hence they are usually made more out of regret and feeling crap than a deep and profound will for personal change. In order for resolutions to stick, start working on them NOW so that by the first you are ready to roll.

Here are my seven top tips to make 2021 the year you want it to be, and the start of a life more aligned with your principles and goals.

1. Brainstorm: make sure it’s what you really want.

We all want to eat healthier and exercise more — but these are really just habits that reflect a deeper desire — to be the best expression of our selves we can. While we should all practice self-acceptance, wanting to be better is not a bad motivation so long as you really understand what that means to you.

For example, if the goal of “losing weight” is more of a punishment than a motivation —coming from a place of body shame— it’s not a good start. Make your goals advocate for a better you, not beat you into submission.

Who do you want to be in the world? How do you want your life to look? What would it be like if you had alignment between your values, your work, and relationships? The goals you might have (getting out of debt, drinking less, starting a side hustle) are markers of something deeper with you. Find out what that is first. Take some time before New Year’s Day to brainstorm about your best life. Visualise how you’d look after having achieved your goals:

What does it look like?

What are you doing?

How does it feel?

What would you see around you that indicates you’ve got there?

Do this in any way you like, write it down, draw it, create a vision board with images cut from magazines, whatever works. It’s your life, it’s your year, make sure your motivations come from the right place. Find out what’s right for you.

2. Get specific

Once you’re clear about your motivations, get specific about them. Everybody’s heard about “SMART” goals — goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. The thing is that most people are great at coming up with ideas but much worse at plugging those ideas into system that works to help them achieve them.

Personally there’s no better way to throw a wet blanket on an enthusiastic idea than to SMART-goal them.

Even so, great ideas are just not enough. They need to be implemented into a system.

Find a system, any system that works and that you can depend on. If you have a goal to go to the gym three times a week, put it in your calendar as you would an essential meeting with someone else.

If you want to save up a certain sum of money, make dates in your calendar to check your bank accounts and keep yourself honest. Different systems work for different people but you must find a system if you are going to implement the habits you need to achieve your goals. One of my favourite systems for managing tasks (and goals) is called GTD, or Getting Things Done a workable system from the eponymous book. Another reason why you need to start now, so you can learn and implement your system from the 1st with a good plan.

3. Lose old habits

We think our resolutions are about starting something new, but they are actually more about giving up something old: habits. Habits are hard to break because they are programmed into us over time and become automated. People are creatures of habit which are like rolling programmes in our brains that do the thinking for us. That’s why we can mindlessly brush our teeth in the morning without even thinking.

While we often think about habits as behaviours like that, they can also be thought patterns. For example, if you are habituated to thinking you’re not good enough for something, or associate fear with some kind of behaviour (like giving presentations), they will get in the way of achieving your goals just like smoking will get in the way of a healthy heart and lungs. And just like giving up smoking it will feel weird and uncomfortable (see tip 5) when you try to stop.

Habitual thinking, not habitual behaviour, is one of the great unrecognised aspects of personal change.

What thought habits are getting in your way? These often look like:

I’m not the kind of person who has a job like that.

I never see anything through and always quit halfway through.

If I let myself be vulnerable with someone they’ll let me down.

If you can identify those habits of thought, and let them go, you open the door to being different and better in the world. It’s easier said than done — but the sooner you identify the blocking inhibiting habit, the quicker you can find your way to a better expression of you.

4. Create new habits

Because habits are like automatic behaviours, the more we can automate better ones the easier our goals are achieved.

Achieved goals are the lagging indicator of good habits.

While it’s great to get those SMART goals written down — it’s the habits you engage in every day that matter the most. In order to make new habits you have to replace old ones with better ones. You do that by making the new habits as easy as possible to keep — that means no Pringles in the house and packing your gym back the night before so it’s at the foot of your bed when you wake up in the morning.

There’s a lot of science about habits, so don’t reinvent it on your own — get as much help as you can. Check out Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit for some great research and suggestions about how to change your habits.

5. Prepare to feel uncomfortable

New habits and a better life do not come for free. Whenever you choose something new it feels weird and uncomfortable. The reason why most people don’t achieve their resolutions is because they don’t like the uncomfortable feeling they get when they give up an old habit and start a new one. If you sort your day’s stress with a nightcap, and then give up alcohol on weekdays, you’re going to feel uncomfortable dealing with your day’s stress over a mug of tea. The thing is, you’ll get used to it and after some time you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.

If your goal is to be more vocal in the workplace or more assertive with your spouse, it will feel odd, you won’t want to do it. You’ll want to avoid it. The thing is, discomfort from change only goes away if you face it, not if you avoid it.

The bad news is that you simply have to feel uncomfortable to implement change in your life otherwise change ain’t gonna happen. The good news is tolerating discomfort is a great life skill, and the more you face it, the better you become at it.

For some help in stopping avoiding things because of fear check out Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway or Daring Greatly.

6. You might have to lose the person you know to find the potential inside.

Everybody has different aspects of themselves living inside them. There is the person that says, “no more Pringles” and the other person that buys a tube of them on impulse the very next day.

In order to achieve your goals you have to build trust in Person One, and that can take some time. The reason why you were unable to stick to goals in the past is that you never believe that Person One was real. Until you really believe in them, you won’t be able to become them. This doesn’t mean you should neglect Person Two — they should have their Pringles every now and then. Person One all the time makes Jack a dull boy — Person Two should shine and play, but in moderation.

Many of us simply don’t recognise ourselves as person one. We imagine that person waking up early, working out, doing the right thing and think, “well, that’s just not me!” (see tip 3). If Person One wants a side hustle, a meditation practice, or a promotion, Person Two is going to have to give up those hours of Netflix, waking up a the last possible moment, and those cylinders of Pringles.

When you become habituated to Person One, Person Two simply won’t fit so much anymore.

7. Track change, forgive yourself, and reward yourself.

Achieving your goals is a marathon, not a race. You will have good moments and bad ones. You will have wins and failures. By tracking your changes you can see the cumulative effect of your small gradual changes. One tube of Pringles next to a week and a half of healthy meals is not a failure, it’s a treat. But by being honest with yourself you can see that in effect, the balance is in your favour. If it starts to fall out of favour, don’t freak out, don’t berate yourself, just gently redress the balance.

We’re all human, even your Person Two isn’t a bad person, and they need their time in the sun too. Treat yourself, enjoy life, don’t become a Person One fascist! If you fall off the wagon, forgive yourself. If you’re doing really well, reward yourself. In achieving your goals you send a message to yourself that you care, so it shouldn’t feel like going to military camp.

It can feel uncomfortable, it can feel hard, but it can also feel gratifying, satisfying, and like you’re finally growing up into who you always wanted to be.

Ultimately, setting goals and achieving them, if done right, is a signal of self love.

Okay, “loving yourself” is a tired old trope of the self-help industry, but all the same, it’s important. The whole point of preparing your resolutions ahead of time is to really identify your goals so that you are in alignment with yourself and the world in which you inhabit. You will be doing yourself a favour.

Typical resolutions like “I’m gonna loose twenty pounds so I can fit into my old swimsuit in July” can be an act of self-hate, not self love. It’s also ineffective because you’re at war with your body and you’re at war with your body it will fight back.

You want to get healthy as a way of loving your body not fighting it

If you have trouble loving yourself — this is exactly where you should start — developing that habit. Every goal and resolution you set on top of that will then be motivated by seeking the best alignment between yourself and the world going forward, which is a marvellous place to start.

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

Book recommendations are listed on my Amazon shop as a matter of universality and convenience. Please support your local independent bookstores if you can. I am not a Pringles sales rep (but they are very treacherously attractive to my Person Two).