5 Ways to Make Your New Year's Resolution a Reality

For many, the New Year heralds the start of a fresh beginning, as well as a cognitive 'restart button' through which we often believe all of our perceived inadequacies can be erased with the use of a 'resolution'.

According to Forbes Magazine, 40% of Americans make New Year's resolutions. This tells us that the rest of the first world is probably not far behind. The success rate for change attempts is much more sobering. University of Scranton research suggests that just 8% of people achieve their New Year's goals. Furthermore, longitudinal examination of change attempts over a 2 year period indicated only 19% of participants were able to maintain their pledges for two years.

In principle a resolution should be simple to keep. You make a promise and then follow it through. So, what is it about New Years resolutions that is so hard to maintain?

The Major Players:

1. Lack of willpower
2. Inability to control the 'stimulus' (events in the environment that influence behaviour)

In the example of weight loss / gain - junk food may be considered a 'stimulus'. Thus, your inability to control your family's or partner's purchasing and stocking of all of the yummy junk food's you so decadently indulge in, can be seen as a barrier to maintaining your New Year's resolution.

Now before you sign the divorce papers or lock yourself in the basement for 6 months to ensure the success of your goals, we should look at another elements of maintaining goals - slips. Approximately 53% of the people in the study cited earlier that managed to maintain their goal, experienced at least one slip. Over two years, the average number of slips for successful participants was 14. This should tell you something: nobody is perfect, and nobody has willpower of steel. Slips were found to be precipitated by:

1. Lack of personal control
2. Excessive Stress
3. Negative Emotion

Sticking with my former example, who hasn't felt the call of the ravenous beast within during a particularly 'low' period filled with stress and negative emotions (e.g. EXAM TIME!). If you have, then fear not - you're not a bad human being .... you're just normal!

So, apart from placing yourself into a impenetrable fortress of solitude (or a research lab with a perfectly controlled environment), what can you do to make sure this year's New Year resolutions are a great success!

• Set S.M.A.R.T. goals:

Saying 'I want to lose weight' is tantamount to saying 'I want to fail' - you haven't set an appropriate goal for yourself. Goals should always be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.

As such plan:

1. Exactly what you want to accomplish, e.g. I want to lose 5kg.
2. How you will measure it, e.g. Using mirror-check's, body fat measurements, tight clothes and track my weight on a scale.
3. Make sure that the goal is something you can achieve, e.g. don't tell yourself you'll be a fitness model in 2 months if you think that the road to your goal will take 2 years.
4. Keep the goal personally relevant - something that's important to you.
5. Set a time-limit, e.g. I will lose 5kg in 5 weeks.

• Fading:

Fading is a principle in psychology where you first use prompts to promote an action before gradually withdrawing them until the need for them fades away.

A simple application in the context of fat loss and muscle gain is images of an achievable physique that you wish to aspire to, or a meal plan stuck on a fridge.

Hanging a tight fitting pair of jeans in the living room can be a reminder of the goal you are working towards. When I was adjusting to a healthy eating plan, I often referred to my meal plan before every meal to ensure that I knew that the food I was about to eat was my 'quota' and that I should enjoy it, because no snacking would come thereafter.

• Counter Conditioning:

Counter Conditioning is essentially replacing an unwanted response with a new response. It is seen is smokers frequently, when they replace a cigarette with a sandwich to quell their addiction.

Instead of that, try replacing your unwanted behaviour with another more healthy one. For example, when you start to feel hungry and you know that this is simply the call of your former over-eating habits, try brushing your teeth or making a pot of tea. This will quell your hunger and condition your body back into a healthy eating regime.

• Give yourself permission to fail:

As evidenced in the above study, a major portion of people have difficulty setting and maintaining long term goals. So why should you be different? I'll tell you why - because we usually set unrealistically higher expectations for ourselves rather than those around us.

Instead of throwing away your resolution with that first sip of alcohol or that first bite of a pizza - try being gentle with yourself and not making a mountain out of a molehill. I guarantee that one or two slips will not result in a broken promise; however, throwing away your resolution for a better you at the first sign of failure is a sure-fire way to ensure that your goal will never be achieved.

• Ask yourself 'how's that working for you?'

Finally, don't be afraid to try something new. If you're a cardio bunny and your goal is to lose weight - why not try to hit the weights. As intimidating as it can be learning a new skill, if you sit with the discomfort of pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone - you will ultimately thank yourself (and me) for it afterwards.

Reference:

J. C. Norcross, & D. J. Vangarelli. (1989). The resolution solution: longitudinal examination of New Year's change attempts. Journal of Substance Abuse, 1(2), 127 - 134.