Happy New Year!
Have you defined your New Year’s resolutions yet? Will you make anything of that gym membership? Or will you at least go for a walk or a run?
And why do people do this at the beginning of the year and not at any other point?
Glad you asked 😀 The tradition of New Year’s resolution goes back all the way to some 4,000 years ago when the Babylonians made promises to their gods in order to gain their favour at the beginning of the New Year (Pruitt, 2020). The Romans carried on this tradition by making promises to the god Janus, for which January is named after, at the beginning of the Gregorian calendar year (Andrews, 2020). This was then naturally inherited by Christianity in some shape or form to what we know today as New Year’s resolutions.
As you know many people define New Year’s resolution targets to accomplish things like quitting smoking or losing those extra pounds (or getting rid of love handles, not that I am talking of personal experience…). It is likely that less than 50% of these people fulfil these targets (Oscarsson et al, 2020). So how can we increase the chance of success?!?
One of the key aspects to increase success with New Year’s resolutions is the creation and maintenance of habits. Habits and routines can support a person to achieve their goals by installing a recurrence in their actions. Now I might be guilty of stating the obvious but how often do we consciously decide to form habits in order to achieve our goals? I can tell you I am the first one to chant the mea culpa. To help you jumping from theory to action think of it from the following perspectives: somebody planning on losing weight can setup habits to exercise or to replace old snacking habits with healthier options, smokers usually replace their smoking needs with habits that might provide a similar dopamine rush, and job seekers might establish a job search routine that helps them increase their chances of getting an interview, and so on.
In order to create a new habit we have to be mindful that to form a new habit it can take from 18 to 254 days (Lally et al, 2010). Wait, 254 days?!?! What does that mean? It means that the habit will become automatic and effortless after a certain time. Now this of course depends on the person, the type of habit and most importantly, how often the habit is repeated. Meaning that the more often you repeat a habit, the quicker it will become effortless. Of course, not every habit can be repeated with the same recurrence and hence there are limitations (snacking apples 300 times in a day can surely not be good).
Whilst coaching and psychological support do increase the chances of succeeding, it is not mandatory as long as you successfully maintain your habits (and this is me shooting myself on the foot, yes). For instance Marlatt found that 20 percent of the smokers he studied kicked their habit without professional help, a figure comparable to success rates of professionally designed programs (Marlatt et al, 1988).
Still, coaching can only improve the success rate, never forget that 😉
Have a lovely new year and remember that you can follow me on Instagram where I share tips and where you can see my happy face 🙂
