SCIENCE: Why Your New Year’s Resolution Is Going To Fail

Less than one quarter of the people who make New Year’s resolutions actually succeed in keeping their goal.  A new study performed by psychologists in the UK asked 700 people how they went about try to keep New Year’s resolutions.  Only 22% percent of the participants were successful.

The Telegraph reports that the most common resolutions were quitting smoking, losing weight, having more successful relationships, or getting a new qualification.  People who were successful at achieving these goals tended to break the goal down into smaller steps, told friends and family about their goals, and kept a hand written journal of their progress.

Most people fail in keeping New Year’s resolutions for the following reasons:

• Listening to self-help experts.  The research study concluded that many people listen to self-help experts but that this simply does not work.  When you are trying to lose weight putting up a picture of a skinny model on your mirror and visualizing yourself thin is simply just not enough.
• Relying on willpower alone.  When trying to quit and addiction it is probably best not to “white-knuckle it” all by yourself and hope for the best.  People tend have better results at quitting and quit for longer with a support system.
• Making a resolution at the last minute.  Decisions that are made on the spur of the moment tend to be less genuinely motivated.  This means it doesn’t mean that much to you and you won’t give it your all.
• Making too many resolutions at one time.  Trying to make too many changes at once can split your focus and become overwhelming.  It is better to pick one main goal and stay on track.
• Dwelling on the “bad things” that will happen if you don’t achieve your goal.  This simply does not work.
• Other things proven not to work: removing temptation from your environment and adopting role models.

Even though adopting New Years Resolutions has proven to be an almost pointless exercise, throngs of people will do it again this year.  Planning ahead seems to be the best chance for success, as well as treating lapses in the plan as just temporary setbacks.

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Tags: Keeping New Years Resolutions, New Year Resolution, New Years Eve, Prof Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire

This entry was posted on December 29, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under Science & Technolgy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.