Hope for a better tomorrow is one element of life shared by most human beings no matter their ethnicity, wealth or gender. And this optimism is often at its peak at the start of a new year because people traditionally see this time as one of renewal, a chance to start afresh and kick bad habits.
Besides that, most people consider it best to be positive at the beginning of a new year, as they believe – often subconsciously – that if they can make the right start by doing the correct and best things to do, then they may be able to improve their life in some desirable way.
This is why the start of a new year is often awash with people reflecting on what they didn’t do right in the past and pledging to get it right for the immediate future. So there are promises to quit smoking, lose weight, save money, stop allowing people to take advantage of our kindness, go back to church, promise not to cheat again, try not to stop being late, and several more.
The fact that most people never fulfill these commitments they make to themselves is often indicative of the difficulty of changing one’s behaviour easily. Hence this week’s triple-barrel question, “Have you ever kept any of your New Year’s resolutions? What were they and what drove you to achieve them? Given that so many people tend not to keep their resolutions, does it make any sense to continue going through this ritual each year?”
Most respondents said that making New Year’s resolutions are a waste of time as few people ever keep them for a variety of reasons. One man was particularly cutting in his comments when he said: “You can make the same resolutions on April 1, All Fools Day, because that is all people keep doing to themselves – fooling themselves; they certainly don’t fool anybody else.”
However one man responding on our Facebook link said that making such resolutions does work for some people. He said, “I kept two resolutions: Quit drinking in 12/31/2001, quit smoking in 12/31/2005.”
This man’s success notwithstanding, it is known that the majority of New Year’s resolutions are never kept, and in cases where they were pursued and some desired improvement was achieved, people often slipped back into their old habits over time.
Why does this happen?
It all relates to behavioural change and the reality that achieving this goal is extremely difficult, even though making adjustments to lifestyles may be a life-or-death situation. The gravity of this truth was brought home even more after reading the article Change or Die by Alan Deutchman in the May 2005 issue of the business magazine Fast Company.
In that article, in which he reviewed IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook conference held the year before in New York to propose solutions to some of the world’s major problems, medical and business experts alike noted that to improve things and achieve progress in any endeavour, “the core of the matter is always about changing the behaviour of people”.
The article reported that if ten people were given the ultimatum – change or die – only one would successfully make long-term behaviour change.
A good example of this is when a person suffers a heart attack. Immediately after this frightening experience, people typically try to change their toxic habits. But most people revert to their old habits within a year.
Quoting experts in their field, Deutchman added: “We see the same scenario in corporations. Executives notice tension among team members, low morale, high turnover and poor communication among managers.
“The company brings in a top-flight leadership programme. The programme and the talented instructors make a great splash. The participants love the program and they feel motivated to make changes. They want to change. And for a short while after the programme, some of the participants get involved in new behaviours. But, within a year almost every manager reverts to previous behaviour. A lot of money is spent, but not much has changed.
“The difficulty of changing behaviour is related to how we learn new skills. Learning is a physical thing that happens in the brain. With continuous repetition, over time, brain cells are stimulated to physically connect into pathways that enable the new skills.”
No wonder then that New Year’s resolutions often come to naught.
The following are the edited versions of some responses:
• “I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense going through the ‘My New Years Resolution is’ scenario – just live. Do what you normally do, just do it better.
“Why do people have to quantify and classify it as something novel when all it is, is just life and improving oneself as the years go by?
“Like the Nike ad states, my New Year Resolution was why make resolutions when we don’t keep them?”
• “It does not make sense. That’s like cooking for just yourself and not even touching it – just a huge waste of time.”