Goals, Not New Year's Resolutions
by Vic WIens
Do you still make New Year’s resolutions? Most people have given up long ago, due to discouragement. About 15 years ago I realized that I would make much more progress in changing habits if I set goals instead of making resolutions.
Let’s say that you make a New Year’s resolution to start running three times a week. You get to a good start on January 1st and keep the resolution for two weeks. Then you have a particularly busy 3rd week and run only one day. Your resolution is broken. I guess you will have to wait until next year to resolve again to start running three times a week.
Do you see a problem with this kind of reasoning? The concept of making resolutions is flawed, because it assumes you can succeed the first time you try. However, it takes time to develop a new habit. It is common to fail numerous times before the new habit is ingrained. Goal setting, on the other hand, combines reality with resolve.
If you make it your goal to develop a habit of running three times a week, your busy 3rd week may be a setback, but you simply reset your resolve the next week and continue to pursue you goal. If you keep up your resolve and pursue your goal even when there are periods of failure, you will eventually succeed. In fact, you are biologically designed to succeed.
Biologically, a habit is a neurological pathway in the brain. A well worn pathway is like a rut. A good habit is a good rut and a bad habit is a bad rut. Success in life is largely a factor of taking responsibility for your neurological ruts.
Using the analogy of ruts, you can see that some habits will be easier to form than others. If you are already in a rut, and are trying to get out of the rut to develop a new rut, you will have to pursue the new habit much longer, and you will have to expect more failures along the way as you develop the new habit. Don’t get discouraged if this happens. It is just part of the biological process of developing a new neurological pathway that is deeper or better worn than the old neurological pathway that is associated with the old habit.
New Year’s resolutions fail because they do not consider our human biology. Goal setting is completely consistent with human biology, and it the key to literally becoming a different person, right down to the level of human biology and neurological pathways. You are designed to succeed!
Why, then, do we not always succeed? The other reality of our humanness is our finiteness. We can only focus on a few habit changes at a time. When you are trying to change a deeply ingrained habit, you may have to focus on changing only that one habit. On the other hand, if you are moving into new territory where you do not have existing habits, you may be able to handle developing several new habits at a time. On average, apparently people are able to change three habits at a time, and develop the new habits in about one month. That means that on average, you should be able to develop over 30 new habits in a year!
The place to start is to set a few realistic goals and pursue them at a realistic rate. As you do so, you will develop a habit of developing habits! Once you have a habit of changing habits, you are well on the way to success. And just say goodbye to the habit of making New Year’s resolutions! Replace it with the habit of goal setting.
