Why Your New Year’s Resolution Is Bound to Fail

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baggage

Do you make New Year’s resolutions?

If you are like the millions who do, you no doubt find that they are always harder than they seem. Looking back at the last few years, many of us recognize a pretty poor track record.

Even the words “New Year’s resolution” conjures thoughts of failure and personal experiences of hope dashed before February.

I asked my friends for responses on Facebook to the question:

Quick! First word you think of when you hear “New Year’s resolution”:

Here are some:

Ugh.
Disappointment
Nope!
Fail.

Some were positive or eternally optimistic. Or right to the point:

WAIT!

[That is so classic, Sally.]

I never used to make resolutions. Then I got on a productivity and personal growth kick and found myself saying  “this one will be my best year ever.” That was back in 2012. I did it again in 2013. And 2014. Before that, I had two straight years of making “this year at least passable when stacked up against last year” and “this year has got to come close to the year before last year.”

The trouble I always had with making New Year’s resolutions stick is that they never seemed to. Failure was inevitable. That’s the problem.

No. I mean, the actual problem.

It is easy to look at New Year’s resolutions as if they are about succeeding and failing. That you try and it doesn’t work out. In that way, we say that the problem is literally that we failed them.

Or we see New Year’s resolutions as inevitable failures. So when we fail at them, the problem is not just that we fail at them, but that we were always going to fail at them.

I think the problem with our New Year’s resolutions and our failure to make them stick is that we are looking at them all wrong.

What a resolution really is

The word resolution has many definitions, including

and

Thanks, Wiktionary!

We tend to think of resolutions as brute force of will, that with the right amount of determination, we too can break the bad habit or stick to the new habit we are starting.

If I just try really hard. Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaarrrrghh!

Nothing yet? Damn.

And then we go to the next part: we make a promise to ourselves, that this one change will solve everything. If we just make a promise. Every day.

I’ll get up early or I’ll make time to exercise or I’ll skip the chocolate in the checkout. I’ll just write it down and make a promise to myself. Or to GOD. You know, whomever. Here I go!

[a week later]

Why? What did I ever do to you? Good lord, I’ve gained 10 pounds and I’m getting up later? What the heck?

Then the last definition comes in: the changing of laws or rules:

It is here resolved that we, the people of truly bad habits, will endeavor to take upon ourselves this year of 2012 2013 2014 2015 that we will hold one another accountable for the duration of this calendar year,

And be it resolved that should any of us slip and fall off of the wagon, that we should make only one (1) strong attempt to return said person to the wagon before leaving them for dead,

And be it further resolved that upon completion of this calendar year, we shall all celebrate in a Bacchanalian feast fitting to the frigid New York festivities hosted by a charismatic host. But those who do not make it to NYC, shall be put to death.

These definitions all swim around the problem, but none of them actually name it.

Perhaps the main reason we fail is that we think resolutions are simple fixes to a surface problem, rather than exploring a deeper need for change.

  • That we can simply name something we need to do and do it.
  • Or modify an aspect of our behavior or adapt to a new one.

But we do this without changing anything below the surface. We don’t change how we approach our behaviors. This is why health experts tell us not to diet, but instead change the way we approach our food.

When we make resolutions, we resolve to change. Ultimately, this actually requires change. And more than that, it requires that we accept that making change means accepting everything that changes.

Rewriting the Rules

This is how it clicked for me this year. As I was thinking of resolutions, I thought of legislation. I thought of how laws and rules and canons are constructed, but more importantly, how they are changed. How all the rules we live by are set, not by a complete monolith of law, but of a collection of ever-changing rules, which are tweaked and transformed by resolutions.

The power of the resolution from the legal standpoint is not that the entire thing is changed by a single resolution, but that the entire thing is composed of resolutions. That we are rulebooks that are open for alteration.

And well-placed changes can lead to transformations.

This year, I’m not racing into resolutions. And I’m not simply re-upping the ones from last year. Or the year before. But I’m rewriting the rules. The rules that define who I am and how I behave. The rules that don’t work for me or don’t serve their intended purpose. I’m making myself better.

I used to resolve to write a book. Not this year. Of course, I still plan on it. The book ideas I’ve been sitting on really are good. But that isn’t a resolution. The real resolution has many pieces to it. It includes

  1. Making time for writing more
  2. Relieving the pressure to write by doing more freewriting
  3. Overcoming the fear of rejection by seeking out other vehicles for publication
  4. Making connections with others who can help me with my process
  5. Organizing a retreat with my seminary classmates
  6. Putting competing goals on the backburner
  7. Find more joy in the process

These aren’t 7 resolutions, but one thing that requires a lot of work, a lot of determination, and whole lot of institutional change in myself. Changes to my attitude, to my behavior, and to my habits.

This is a rewrite, a new draft of a rulebook. One that still makes me me. Just a me that I like better. A me closer to the me I’m called to be.

How about you? How will you rewrite your rulebook this year?