Hello and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of the psychology of your 20s new listeners, old listeners. It's so great to have you here. So great to have you here for this super exciting topic that I am so pumped to talk about today. And that is the psychology of New Year's resolutions.
There was no better time to talk about this than now. 2023 is right around the corner. Maybe you're listening to this in the month of January. The new year has just started. And with that, many of us tend to make
Some pretty big promises or goals for ourselves for the new year for 2023, which I think is honestly incredible. A great idea. I think that New Year's resolutions are a really kind of positive thing to reflect on and to set for ourselves
as we enter into a new chapter, you know, they're all about self-improvement and agency and growth, which I think also really embodies this show. So I'm a big fan, and if you are setting New Year's resolutions this year, I want you to succeed. So today we are going to break down the history and also the psychology behind New Year's resolutions.
why it is that we set them to begin with, why they often fail, but also what we can learn from our failures and the failure of new year's resolutions so that we can succeed so that we can see our new year's resolutions through.
Essentially, what I really want to understand and explain in today's episode is what it is that determines the success of a New Year's resolution. There is so much fascinating research behind this, so many interesting concepts like Roman philosophy, self-efficacy and self-improvement theory, even a discussion of social norms.
and so much more. So I am so excited to jump into this first episode of the New Year series, perhaps the first episode of 2023. It's going to be an amazing year. What a great way to kick it off with a discussion about New Year's resolutions.
Let's get into it and learn all that there is to know about New Year's resolutions and hopefully learn how we can apply some of the theory, some of the psychology to our own goals so that we can be successful at the end of the day.
So of course, as we always do at the beginning of each episode, we want to break down some of the history behind New Year's resolutions and get our basics down pat before jumping into the psychology and the explanations behind why this concept, this idea of making promises to ourselves at the beginning of the New Year, why it even exists.
So the origin of making New Year's resolutions, it rests with the Babylonians. For those of you who do not know who these people are, I didn't know who they were, but they were an ancient group of people who lived in present day Iraq from I think like 2000 to 400 BC. And many historians trace the beginnings and the existence of New Year's resolutions back to this group.
So, these people would reportedly make promises to the gods in hopes that they would earn good favour in the coming year. So, for example, they might make a promise that they're going to have the most successful harvest they've ever seen or be a really good partner or a really good husband or wife.
And by succeeding in that, by fulfilling that goal, that ambition, they almost demonstrated to the gods that they were true to their word, that they had integrity, that they were good people. And as a result, they would receive good favour, good karma from these same gods.
Although I don't think that we make our modern-day resolutions to the gods per se, the New Year is still, and obviously a very important and somewhat spiritual time that represents so many things, but mostly new beginnings, the future, or a new chapter in our lives.
Interestingly, this is, I think, a very common meaning. It's applied across different cultures. The month of January is actually named after the god Janus, who was the god of new beginnings. So we can see that there is this reverence placed on the new year throughout many cultures and throughout many time periods.
I think as humans we really crave the comfort of meaning and tradition. And the new year is able to bring both of these things and offer somewhat of a dedicated time for reflection and contemplation of what we want from this new period of our lives.
And you know, it often involves a pretty big celebration as well, you know, fireworks, champagne and all that. But more than that, I think it provides a dedicated time for looking back, feeling grateful and nostalgic, and perhaps also thinking about what it is about our lives that may be missing something, where we feel we may be lacking or dissatisfied, where we can improve,
whilst also being hopeful for the future and invested in the ways that we can better ourselves. We tend to set resolutions at this time of the year because the new year in particular serves as this cyclical marker of time.
during which we can reevaluate and take inventory on our lives. And the drive for making resolutions is very much motivated by this punctuation in time, which activates our hopes and our expectations for what we want to achieve going forward.
So this psychologist, her name is Dr. Strongin, she had a really good explanation for this that I thought would be super relevant when we're talking about why it is that the new year really sparks this desire to change up our lives. And she says that the new year, what it does is gives us a sense of renewal.
And it causes us to think about areas in our lives where we want to improve. And this kind of distinct start of a new chapter of a new year, you know, the clock kind of ticks over into a new calendar. It feels like a natural time to make this change. There is really no better time than the beginning of a new year.
And I think this is the marvel and also the significance of a new year for making massive changes to our everyday lives and I guess our overall lifestyle.
When we think of New Year's resolutions, I think a few typical categories or examples often come to mind. And there's actually been research on this, on these very categories, these common categories that we see. So this woman Caitlin Woolley from Cornell, she did some research into New Year's resolutions and she wanted to find out what were the most common types of resolutions.
I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, but the majority overwhelmingly, I think it was as high as like 55, 56% of resolutions were health related. So, wanting to exercise more, eat healthy, lose weight, those were by far the most common New Year's resolutions reported.
Then we have work-related and financial-related kind of resolutions at about 35%. So a lot of people reported that they are going into the new year wanting to save money, get out of debt, get organized by a house, these kind of financial and work-related ambitions that they have. And then we also have these social goals. These accounted for about 5 to 10% overall.
You know, it calls like spending more time with family, making more friends, making time for romance, going on dates, meeting a partner. These were also a pretty big category of New Year's resolutions. I don't think I was surprised at all to hear how many resolutions or goals we make at the start of a new year have to do with our physical health and our physical appearance.
Mainly just because I think it is a huge source of just general insecurity for many of us, for many, many people. And these goals can be super varied, but they're often focused on things like feeling better in our bodies, maybe being able to accomplish a certain physical feat like a half marathon,
Sometimes they have a lot to do with our eating and our diet but of course also on how we look. Fitness is obviously a part of this but I definitely have a bit of a bone to pick with goals that are focused on weight loss
Just because I actually think they're really hard to achieve, especially with the pressure and the hype of a new year. We get so excited about this. We imagine how we're going to look, what it's going to feel like. We don't understand the investment that it sometimes takes.
And I've been seeing New Year's resolutions about weight loss everywhere, all over my TikTok right now. And it's kind of what inspired me to do this episode because I began thinking about my own New Year's expectations or goals for 2023. And I can honestly say, I think this is the first year that my New Year's resolutions are not focused on what I look like.
or, you know, my body, which is like so shocking to me, I think that they have been focused on that for as long as I can remember. There's no shame if that is your New Year's resolution, you know, it's your body, it's your choice. As long as you're going into it with a healthy and sustainable mindset, go for it. It's honestly your life. And if that's going to make you happier, that's fantastic that you have, you know, decided to focus on that.
for your health and as an element of your health for 2023. But I think there are other health goals as well that are perhaps more achievable. And I would say more holistic, you know, maybe your New Year's resolution is to stop drinking or to drink less. That's one of mine. Next year, I really, I honestly do not have the time to be hungover as much as I was last year. And I just kind of want to cut back. So that's one of my new resolutions.
Another one I see quite often is to walk 10,000 steps a day. I think that one in particular, that 10,000 step one is a lot more achievable than setting some obscure weight loss goal because it's achievable. It can be integrated into your life.
and it affects so much more than just the number on a scale that affects the time we spent outdoors, it affects how we feel in our body, it affects our cardiovascular health, so I think it's a much more well-rounded goal.
Another big category that obviously I'm a huge fan of is the mental health resolutions, the mental health goals. These are mainly focused on our emotional well-being and the things that we can do to shift our mindset and our mental perspective.
You know, there are the normal ones like going to therapy Trying to perhaps prioritize your boundaries and your space but there are some others that I think are fantastic like reducing your screen time our exposure to social media and to just the internet and screens in general and
can have such a strange and nuanced effect on our mental health. So, I think reducing screen time is such a fantastic goal, if that is your priority. Reading more, that's an amazing one, it's highly achievable. And another one I saw was to get at least 20 minutes of sun or outdoors time a day.
That is such an amazing New Year's resolution, honestly. It's so easy to integrate into our lives, especially if you live somewhere like Australia where, you know, the weather is sometimes bad, but in general, most of the time, bearable. And it also allows us to incorporate many of the health benefits of being in nature. So I think that if that is something you want to focus on, what an amazing goal.
A couple others, just to briefly mention, we talked about financial goals, you know, saving for a particular reason. Maybe you want to buy a house or go on a big trip. And then there are some other like niche goals and achievements like, I don't know, wanting to climb Everest or to knit 50 mini jackets for your cat, start a business, start a podcast. That one sounds pretty familiar.
and these kind of goals are often super unique and I would say not shared by many people which at times on one hand I think can make it harder to form community but it also makes it so much more worthwhile because fewer people have that goal and achieving it is going to be so much more sweet and such an amazing feeling. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list
I honestly think that any facet of our lives where we're perhaps not quite satisfied or fulfilled or would like to do better can be made into a goal. And sometimes the significance of a new year, of a new leaf, a new chapter, but also the explicit kind of start date and point from which to track our progress can be a huge enabler of our success.
But let's now tackle the psychology behind how we can create realistic New Year's resolutions and almost offer a bit of an equation for success so that we can start 2023 with the best versions of ourselves in mind.
So we have explained some of the history, the categories, the traditions behind Nia's resolutions, but now to the psychology. What is it about the new year that causes us to have these elaborate and grand expectations for ourselves to set these resolutions?
I think as humans, we are naturally and innately very attuned to self-improvement. It is very much part of our complexity and a unique aspect of our species that we have this capacity to consider the future and ourselves within it.
And with that, we tend to imagine versions of ourselves that do not yet exist, ones that might be better. Because of this unique ability, we're able to set goals and objectives that lead to better versions of ourselves. That is the premise of New Year's resolutions.
The idea, though, of a New Year's resolution, it tends to rest on three fairly important psychological concepts, the first being personal development, the second being self-efficacy, and finally the idea of social norms.
Personal development, it's all about looking inward and focusing on the ways to better yourself. It's so obvious how that has a relationship to New Year's resolutions. But essentially this focus allows us to increase our self-awareness, our self-esteem and to fulfill future aspirations that we may have for our lives.
When we make a New Year's resolution, whatever it may be, we are channeling our personal development and our focus on personal growth and kind of channeling that in a way that allows us to be productive and to live a more fulfilled and satisfying life.
Without this ability or the skills to reflect inwards and upwards, we can remain fairly stagnant and unsatisfied with our lives, which is why the New Year is such an important time to make certain promises to ourselves because they are focused on improving our lives in order to enhance the overall quality.
So even if we don't fully realize our goals, the very act I think of just reflecting on where we want to improve, where we want to be, putting energy towards that is so valuable. Because not only does it mean that we have a sense of the future and a sense of meaning, but we also have a desire to be better, which is in itself a very inherently valuable idea to have.
The second psychological concept that I think is perhaps even more important to consider in the context of New Year's resolutions is self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is at the very core, perhaps the central pillar to establishing goals for ourselves in the New Year.
Essentially, it refers to our belief in our capacity to execute the behaviors necessary to produce specific outcomes. Just to break that down a little bit more, it essentially encompasses our confidence that our behavior
and our actions will be able to exert and influence over our environment and over our future so that we can achieve our goals. Without self-efficacy, without this belief, and our ability to alter our lives, the idea of a New Year's resolution, it literally wouldn't exist. It wouldn't be anything but wishful thinking.
That is what distinguishes the New Year's resolution from just a fantasy. It's that acknowledgement that what we want for our lives will require our effort and therefore this belief that our actions, our behaviors will actually have some influence over whether or not we achieve a certain goal. Without self-efficacy, why would we even try? There's no point trying.
I think virtually all people can identify some form of goal that they have. However, I think where we go wrong is that most of us don't always think about the fact that putting these plans into action isn't as simple as we think.
and self-efficacy is going to play a major role in how we approach this goal and how we approach this challenge. People with stronger self-efficacy, they often recover really quickly from setbacks. They make a plan, they view problems as something to be mastered, and they really are a lot more invested in their goals and they're invested in the activities.
that they are required to do to achieve these goals. In contrast, we see people who have lower or weaker self-efficacy tend to really avoid some of the challenging tasks and behaviors that are required
They focus a lot on the potential of failure and on the negative outcomes and they quickly lose confidence in their personal abilities, right? Like they don't feel confident that they have the agency, they have the strength, they have the skills necessary to achieve their goal.
Obviously, if you have set an ambitious New Year's resolution, whatever it may be, a strong sense of self-efficacy is going to be a great asset to achieving this goal. And importantly, self-efficacy, it's not something you're born with, right? It's actually something that you can develop and train within yourself.
And there are a few ways to do that, firstly, by celebrating your successes, by really consciously recognizing instances in which you have been able to influence your destiny or change an outcome, modeling and observing the behaviors and stories of others, having those positive role models or mentors to kind of show you that this is possible.
And another way is to seek out positive feedback and positive affirmations. Obviously, when you hear positive feedback from others, that can really help improve your sense of self-efficacy. And not only that, but your sense that you are actually achieving your goal, that it is recognizable from the perspective of other people.
You know, if your therapist tells you that you're doing a really good job at prioritizing your mental health, that's setting boundaries, that's going to be so encouraging and it's going to make you want to keep going. But in contrast, and on the other hand, negative feedback, negative comments can also have a pretty powerful undermining effect. So be conscious about who you share your goals and ambitions with.
I don't think there is anything more demoralizing than someone telling you that what you're doing is not worth it or that you're going to fail. It's such a terrible, terrible feeling. So if you want to succeed, you have to create a supportive environment that contains people who really believe in your abilities and they believe in your success.
Finally, making a New Year's resolution, it's somewhat of a social norm these days, right? Like, a social norm being these kind of informal rules or expectations that we have. It's very much influenced by what we see other people doing.
It gets to December, early January and people start talking about their new year's resolutions and we feel like we should probably have a few of our own. This is not a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it's one of the more positive social norms that we've discussed on the show because as we said, the primary reason for setting this kind of goal at the start of the year
is for self growth. So as long as we're not harming anyone, they seem to be overall a pretty positive thing. Well, at least that's what we think is the case. But it might actually be that New Year's resolutions are neither positive or negative, especially when we consider how many of us and how many of our resolutions end up failing.
And that is what I want to discuss next. Why is it that so many of our ambitions for the New Year end up being forgotten by the second or third week of January?
Every year, in early January, millions and millions of us resolve to change something about our lives, change something about our behaviour, whether it is to get really fit, to eat better, to save money, spend more time with our friends, whatever it is. There is no denying that most of us have something in mind that we want to change in 2023.
Here is the sad reality though. For most of us, these New Year's resolutions are going to fall by the way side within a few weeks. The best example I think of this of the early failure of many resolutions is
Thinking about how busy your gym is in the first weeks of January, yet by February, they're normally back to usual. That's because we often get wrapped up in the excitement of setting the resolution of imagining the outcome without realizing how much commitment it can take.
the easiest step to making a new year's resolution is telling yourself that you're going to do it, is making that promise and imagining the success, imagining your future body or your future financial situation,
or your amazing life, especially in that moment before we actually have to do some of the work. It is very easy to fantasize, but for anyone who's actually set a new year's resolution, it's a lot harder to actually achieve that goal because it requires often a lot of tedious and persistent work.
I don't really think it's even a goal right if it's easy to achieve. That's part of the allure of New Year's resolutions is that they are really large and grand and significant and they require that significance of the New Year in order to begin.
There are quite a few reasons I want to discuss as to why it's so difficult to stick to our New Year's resolutions and many of these explanations have some pretty fascinating psychology attached.
Firstly, a large amount of our daily behaviours tend to be motivated by what we see as unconscious and automatic habits that have in many ways been ingrained in us since our childhood since our teenage years.
We unconsciously reach for the same types of food, we wake up at the same time, we see the same people, we use the same forms of transport because these actions and these behaviours have become so habitual and it makes it really difficult to change.
And over time, these repetitive ways of behaving tend to become very much automatically queued by the situations that we're in. And they're completely independent from our deliberate thought processes. So much of what we do on a day-to-day basis, we do without thinking.
When we set a new year's resolution though, that is a very deliberate, a very conscious action, a very conscious thought. And it can be really difficult to integrate this conscious and deliberate thing we want to achieve,
into our daily lives and into our daily lives that are filled with automatic behaviors and unconscious habits. Because they are so hard to integrate and because a lot of our resolutions often require almost rewriting or rewiring our automatic behaviors, it takes a lot of conscious energy to uphold these resolutions, which is why they often fail.
This explains why achieving our New Year's resolutions is not just about pure determination. It's not just about how much you want it. The act of achieving any goal requires a lot of intense concentrated energy. And more than that, it requires rewriting unconscious behaviors. You've probably followed for years and years and years.
Often we don't really map out or think about what it's going to take to accomplish a goal. And instead we rely very much on that excitement of the new year as the thing that's going to push us to accomplish this goal. This buzz, this excitement, this expectation. And then that buzz wears off or maybe you realize that actually you've set a few unrealistic expectations for yourself.
For example, if you've decided that 2023, you're going to run a marathon and you've bought tickets for a race in April, it's highly unlikely that you're going to do that. You really set yourself up to fail because you haven't been honest or realistic with yourself.
The cycle of making and subsequently breaking resolutions, it boils down to one core issue or concept and that is honesty. Being honest with yourself about what it is you want, why you want to achieve it and how achievable it is.
So before you set your resolution for 2023, it's really important to ask yourself some of those cool questions and be honest with yourself in answering them. Why is it that this goal is important to you? And how do you imagine it's going to make your life better?
Really, really think about that. Is the outcome of your resolution? Is it going to be enough to motivate you to do the things that you need to do? And is that final end goal something that is achievable?
Honestly, it's also important to reflect on the times when you've tried in the past to achieve this thing or to pursue this change and what went wrong. You know, maybe last year you wanted to wake up at 7 a.m. every day, but you didn't think about the fact that you work a nine to five or that a lot of your socializing happens in the evening.
So think about why you failed. Think about what it was about your environment, about your surroundings that made it difficult to accomplish this goal. We often set lofty goals for the future without seriously and honestly assessing why we've probably struggled in the past and without examining where we are resistant to change that cycle of excitement and resolve and then failure continues to repeat.
It's also really important to be honest about what else is going to have to change in your life to meet your goal and to meet your resolution. We often think about our New Year's resolutions as a pretty isolated desire or an isolated dream without recognizing the lifestyle change that they are going to require. The one I always think of is the New Year's resolution to quit drinking and that's one of mine for this year.
quitting, you know, to quit drinking, quitting alcohol, it sounds simple enough, right? You know, you just say no, you just don't drink. And when you think about it on an individual basis when you're home by yourself, it sounds pretty achievable, right? Like, it sounds fairly simple. But then you have to think about it in terms of the other contexts in our lives in which alcohol is present.
and how much it tends to dominate social occasions and celebrations. Are you going to be okay with not drinking during these times or maybe missing out because of this choice? And are you going to be able to make the changes to your overall lifestyle to enact this goal?
by asking ourselves these questions and also answering them honestly, we're actually setting ourselves up for success because we can alter our resolutions and be more realistic from the get-go and therefore more likely to succeed.
there are of course some other reasons why we typically fail our new use resolutions just to you know list off a couple sometimes we just lack accountability you know it's very easy to fail if the only person you're going to disappoint is yourself
Sometimes our goal doesn't allow for small wins so we give up because we don't see any progress. Maybe it is a lack of planning or the stakes are just too low and sometimes it's just about self-doubt and not believing that we're able to do them. We're not able to achieve what we set our minds to.
With all of that in mind, I really want to turn to our final point for this episode and perhaps the most significant. How can we actually be successful with all of this information and knowledge in mind? What can we learn from our failures so that we can see through our resolutions, we can make the change that we want to in our lives?
Luckily for us, there is quite a lot of research on this. So I've gathered a few tips for us to all share and to hopefully learn from. Firstly, start small. Creating smaller goals that are practical and don't restrict you too much is going to be so much more achievable because those goals and the actions required to meet them are not going to disrupt your life as much.
Think about all of those automatic behaviors that we were talking about before. Undemining them and rewriting them takes a lot of effort. But if we start out small, you know, maybe by initially trying to exercise just for five minutes out of the day or just trying to replace certain foods that are making us feel unwell, it's a lot easier to integrate into our lives rather than trying to completely shift our lifestyle overnight.
These resolutions are also be easier for you to stick to because you're not going to feel like you're missing out and you'll still be able to move closer to your big goal. Sometimes I think we get so excited and we are so impatient that we just rush to the finish line and what ends up happening is that it's A, not very sustainable and B, we just end up failing because any kind of massive life change is going to take so much energy.
Similar to this is ensuring that your goals are clearly defined. I think often we set these very big sweeping goals and we make these big statements like, I want to be healthier or I want to make new friends or I want to be more successful.
But unfortunately, those goals as amazing as they sound, they're not very clear and it's hard to hold yourself accountable if you don't really have a vision or an idea of success in mind. So making sure that you know exactly what it is you're working for, you create a resolution so that you can actionably see when you're getting closer to the end outcome is going to really help you.
And a similar vein to both of those things, I think also limiting yourself to a few resolutions, maybe just one, is also going to be really, really helpful and really enable your success. It's really tempting to do these big to-do lists and to have all these really insane expectations for what we're capable of doing.
Maybe you're someone who can handle that amount of pressure and that many things on your mind, but most of us can't really focus on a huge list at once. It's better to break it down into maybe just one or two goals that we really want to achieve and that way we're not as easily overwhelmed and as frustrated and we can integrate those goals into our life a bit better.
if we've decided, you know, I want to exercise more and then I want to eat better and then I want to be more sustainable and I want to spend money better. That is a lot. That is a lot. So maybe try and find a goal that links all of them, like walking to work. That is sustainable. It's a great exercise and it saves you money because you don't have to pay for petrol or pay for transport.
Another few tips that I kind of gathered was to be realistic. I think we've talked about that already. Find community and with that accountability. If your goal is shared, you're able to relate to others who are going through similar things or facing similar setbacks. And also you feel accountable and you're excited to pursue the goal because you have community surrounding it.
Find a way to track your progress and see the small wins. When we set a big goal and it's in the future and it's going to take a lot for us to get there, we can become disheartened quite easily because we don't see any output from our efforts. So find a way to track your progress or to give yourself some small wins to motivate you along the way.
One way that I do this is I create kind of like a visual vision board or a resource to think about What I want to achieve and why and it helps me keep focused and really visualize the outcome that I want and why I want it It's been so helpful. I do this at the start of most years where I create like a bit of a collage about where I see my year going it's Firstly a really great way to reflect and see what it is that I've realized about that
but it also makes it really clear to me about what it is I'm working towards and I don't lose sight in all the chaos of our day-to-day lives. Finally, it's so important to be mindful, take responsibility for your actions and to stay committed, but also not get too wrapped up in one goal, right? You want your life to be enjoyable and often if you put all your eggs in one basket, if you're too dedicated, if you go about it really intensely,
you're not going to be successful because you're just going to be exhausted and you're going to lose motivation really, really fast. So start with a picture of your future self in mind. Make that image big and bright. Imagine what it feels like. Imagine how you feel and hold that really deeply. Hold on to it as a daily reminder for what you are working for and why you're working towards that. Change your phone background or
something about your environment that reminds you of your goal every day.
I saw this really interesting quote, I think it's a great thing to share, to end up, you know, to wrap up this episode. Winners and losers have the same goals. It's all about who is most consistent. You're allowed to have setbacks, you're allowed to have failures, but if you keep working at it day by day, you just aim to be 1% better every day, it's going to be achievable.
and I wish you the best of luck. I hope that you're successful. How amazing to be setting new year's resolutions. I am so excited for the new year and all that's going to come with it. It's going to be a big year for the podcast and I cannot thank you enough for supporting me throughout 2022. So thank you to all the new listeners, to everyone who shared, to everyone who's
messaged me and followed me. I am so grateful and I cannot wait to push this even further and do so many amazing things in the new year. If you enjoyed this episode, if you think that other people would enjoy it as well, please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps the show to grow and to reach new people. So if you feel called to do so, it makes a huge difference and
yeah i would love i'd be very grateful if you would do that and if you're interested in seeing more of my content please follow our instagram at that psychology podcast often i let listeners of the show decide the episodes that i publish for the week so if that is something you are interested in please give us a follow and participate in the community that way
Thank you again for listening. Good luck if you've set a new year's resolution. I'm sure you're going to do amazing and I will see you next week for a new episode.
