Why New Year's Resolutions Fail and What to do Instead

Right then, hands up all of you... er... us... who have made New Year's resolutions. OK, great... now, hands up for those of us who have fallen flat on our faces by the end of January? Yup... me too. It's inevitable in a way. The New Year rolls around, all fresh and bright and shiny and we think... THIS is the year! And we make a long list of everything that we are going to change this year: lose weight, exercise more, learn to play that dusty guitar in the corner, become fluent in Spanish, start an Emergency Fund, etc. We make these resolutions and resolve to do them, come flood or high water!

Truth is, that shiny new year is weighed down by a sack of expectations before it's even one day old. No wonder that we fail... and yet next year... we try again. I do believe someone had a quote which defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

The thing is, our amazing brain likes to streamline a lot of its work. It doesn't like to have to make decisions on what to do for all sorts of little micro actions, particularly if they are repeated time after time.

For example, driving a car. When we're first learning to drive a car, it's a huge brain drain. Every little action is new and different and we need to pay attention and think things through. But... drive a car for a few decades and these routines just run in the background without a lot of conscious thought. It's how we can get from home to the grocery store and realize we daydreamed the entire way! Of course, if something out of the ordinary happens, the brain kicks in again and we hopefully avoid the deer running across the street.

This brain routine thing can be a good thing... or a bad thing. Sometime when we were kids (or maybe when I was a kid), we'd sit in front of the TV and have a little snack before bed. Repeat that enough times and... now, as an adult, I sit in front of TV and I want a little snack. In some ways, we're no better off than poor Pavlov's dog. Ring the bell and salivate. Turn on the TV and salivate. So these brain routines aren't necessarily good for us... they're just the brain's way of making it's job a lot easier. "Oh yeah, TV's on... time for a snack!"

So, along comes the New Year and we think... right then... enough of that snacking in front of the TV. I am NOT going to snack. It works for maybe a few days or a week and then I've had a crappy day with the Zoom call or whatever and... it's snack time in front of the TV. And... well... once I've snacked one day in front of the TV, it's no biggie to just snack again the next day... and maybe the next day. I can always restart this no snacking thing on February 1. Yeah. Right.

There's a few of things going on here. First is that the brain loves routine... and once a routine has been programmed, it can kick in again days, weeks or months later. Sooo... that one snack night in mid-January ends up continuing for weeks. Second is that nature (and our brain) abhors a vacuum. It doesn't work to just take something away. Or to say "No" to something. Our brains are like... "Wait, what?" and it gets all twitchy because it keeps wanting to run the TV=Snack Time routine. Which explains why we often cave and eat the whole box of Merci chocolates in one go. I should know. sigh. Third is that we have a limited amount of decision-making capacity. So if, as we sit in front of the TV, our brain keeps saying "TV=Snack" and we keep making the decision to say "No"... eventually our "No's" are going to be worn down by the brain's never-ending attempt to run it's little routine.

But... there is help. Our brain programs can be rewritten but it's likely going to take small steps. Instead of relying on willpower and decision-making capacity, which is limited, we set up new habits. Like I said, our brain loves routines and habits are just routines. But habits don't just burst out of our brains fully formed in all their lovely glory. Nope... remember... small steps.

I'm a morning person. I like to get up early and it seems like a perfect time to go for a quick walk, just to get the blood flowing. In the summer, when it's light out and the sun is shining, this is not too challenging. In the winter, when it's dark and the rain is pouring down... good luck with that. If I lie in bed and have think and make a decision about whether or not I am going to go for my walk today... the walk will lose every time.

So, I started small. I'll just get dressed in my walk clothes. And once that's done... I'll go put on my walking shoes and coat. And then I'll just walk to the end of the driveway. Usually, once I'm out there, I'll go farther of course, "Cause, I'm already out here and it's not so bad." After weeks and months of this, it's now second nature... habit... for me to get up in the morning, get dressed and all kitted up in my rain gear and go out for a walk. I don't to have to think about it... it's just what I do in the mornings. It's a full-fledged habit. But... it took a while to get there.

I've also tried to make it a bit more "fun" by downloading audio books from the library and listening to a book as I'm trudging up the Beast Hill with the rain dripping down my face. It distracts me from that little internal voice that still yammers at me... "Do we really want to go up the Beast today? It's going to be sooo hard! And we're going to find out what a winter slug we have become!" But I can't listen to the audio book AND listen to that voice... otherwise I'll miss what's going on the in the book... so I just focus on the book and my brain/body work together to get me walking up the hill. It's when I start to think about it that things can go sideways and I end up just doing a quick walk around the block. The thing is... afterwards, I never regret going out in the pouring rain and slogging up the Beast. I feel good about myself!

Sooo... did I do New Year's Resolutions this year? Kind of. I set some goals for myself, ambitious goals I think, but I've also got a plan of small steps to get there. I'm tying them together with other well-formed habits, a practice called habit-stacking. After lunch, for example, I'm going to sit down at my computer and open a project file I've been working on (well... actually, I've not been working on it... but I want to be working on it!). I plan to work on it for a minimum of 15 minutes. And then we'll see where it goes from there. One of my biggest hurdles is getting started on things but even I can do something for 15 minutes. Odds are, once I'm into it, I'll work on it for a lot longer but... small steps...

As for the TV=Snacking routine/habit... I could do something else and not watch TV (what a thought). Do a puzzle. Genealogy data entry. Read a book. Play a virtual game of Skip-Bo with my Mom. The possibilities are endless. And once the cue (TV) is out of the picture... then the entire routine collapses. As long as I don't start snacking while doing the puzzle.

If I'm dead-set on watching TV, I could have a bowl of fruit on the coffee table, ready to be snacked on. Better than a whole box of chocolates. Speaking of which... I try not to keep chocolates in the house. Cause if they're here... I'll eat them. But it's not a complete vacuum... because I know that if the chocolate munchies strike, I can always walk down to the corner store and buy them. Strangely enough, however, that little bit of extra effort is enough of a kinetic barrier to stop the chocolate craving in its tracks.

There's a tonne of info out there on how to form habits. I recently read James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, which I highly recommend. Another book by Charle Duhigg, The Power of Habit, is also excellent. Maybe in the future, instead of making New Year's resolutions... we'll commit to forming some new habits for the New Year. And they all start with small steps.