We’ve had a month of 2009 already. Where’s it gone? Did you make resolutions and did they work? What had happened to those good New Year’s intentions?
Here’s why most people’s New Year’s resolutions don’t work:
– They didn’t have a strong “For the sake of what?”
If people want to make change and strongly connect to something you really care about – and by this I mean where they spend their time and money not the mission statement – it has a much better chance of working. For example when I work with parents it is often for their children they are improving their lives and finding ways to keep this in mind works wonders when the going gets tough.
– The person who made the resolution hasn’t shifted
People do what you do because of who you are – bodily, emotionally and linguistically. If this doesn’t change their behaviour wont. All learning and change is transformative, so you have to work on yourself to change any behaviour.
– They didn’t have recurrent practices
We are creatures of habit. Learning and change happens when you consciously practice to break a habit – just as you get good at speaking French or playing Tennis through putting in the hours – learning takes recurrent practice over time. It takes roughly three months of practicing a new behaviour to embed it, so if you’re resolutions ARE going well, you’re not home and dry yet. Practice are how we change ourselves.
– They didn’t have a support structure
If we take a integral view of behavioural change it’s clear that individuals alone, can’t do much if they do not have a supportive environment. Let’s say your resolution was to stop drinking, if you keep the same friends and go to the pub every evening still this is unlikely to happen. If however you surround yourself with non-drinking friends and find new places to socialise you may have a chance. In fact all 12 step addiction programmes, which have a life and death interest in behavioural change are based on not only reoccurant practices but group support and mentoring.
So what if you had a New Year’s resolution and it failed? Use it as a learning experience and note which of the above was missing. Try a February resolution with these ingredients and you’ll have a better chance.
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So What: Change is hard and takes personal transformation, practices and support. What you can learn from any resolution gone wrong, is how to learn.
