New Year's Resolutions: The Good, Bad and Ugly
The beginning of the year is symbolic of optimism and hope, as we anticipate the lighter days to come. It is the perfect time for a fresh start, which is perhaps why so many people create New Year's resolutions. The most common intentions are health-related – such as losing weight, giving up smoking or getting more exercise – so surely that means resolutions are good for our health? Not necessarily...
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my Cuddy, a social psychologist at Harvard Business School, argues that resolutions can do more harm than good, especially when we set unreasonable goals that are destined to fail. Sadly, most resolutions do fail; in a study of more than three thousand people who made New Year’s resolutions, only 12% actually reached their goal by the end of the year. Failure Can Affect How We Feel Missing those goals we set for ourselves can leave us in a worse state than we were in before. We still have those extra pounds or bad habits, but we now also criticise ourselves as weak or lacking in willpower. This creates yet more anxiety and stress. The resulting low self-esteem can even lead to further unhealthy action, perhaps driving the urge to drink more or binge in an effort to feel better. To avoid this downward spiral, we need to put any failure down to the strategy adopted rather than to our own innate qualities.
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Understanding Why We Fail To Keep Resolutions Cuddy attributes failure to several factors. First of all, most of us create resolutions in absolute terms, such as vowing to visit the gym three times a week. So, if a week goes by when this is not possible, we have absolutely failed in our resolve. Worse, our resolutions are often based on addressing things we dislike about ourselves, such as being overweight or having bad habits. Cuddy argues that these negative emotions can be demotivating, especially if we focus on an unrealistic outcome rather than the process. Willpower Isn't Something We Can Rely On For some time, psychologists have been saying that willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened (and overtired), but recent studies show it is a far more unreliable resource than that. Psychologist Carol Dweck, and her colleagues at Stanford University, have shown that signs of ego depletion (running out of willpower) were seen
Sally Hart Sally Hart works as a consultant helping companies to reward their employees, covering everything from strategy design to implementation, including benchmarking, policy development, performance management, training, and communication. Having qualified as a management accountant, her background is in finance, which can be a great help when it comes to working to a budget. More recently, she studied Applied Positive Psychology at Bucks University, and she enjoys writing about performance, psychology, and health.
