It’s almost that time again. A new year, a new start. Most of us will be making New Year’s resolutions — promising ourselves that we’re finally going to shed those extra pounds or start that exercise program. Sadly, only around 40% of us will manage to stick to our resolutions for six months or more, and a quarter will have already been abandoned by the end of the first week of the new year!
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be making the same resolutions this year as you did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
Obviously, we failed last year (or we wouldn’t be making the same old promise to ourselves) but that won’t put us off telling ourselves that this time we’re going to succeed.
And, if you are like me, we’re not alone. Studies have shown that people make the same resolution, on average, around ten times.
Even those intrepid souls that do succeed often take 5 or 6 attempts before they do, and of those of us who fail this year, 60% will make the same resolution again next year. It’s always inspiring to see just how prepared people are to try again. But I can’t help wondering whether it’s a testament to our resilience or just a pig-headed refusal to face the facts.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein.
False Hope Syndrome
Psychologists have got a name for this cycle of trying-failing-trying again, they call it ‘false hope syndrome.’ It starts when we take on a major self-change task (particularly changing something we wish we didn’t do but still enjoy, such as overeating or spending too much money).
We all know what happens; we start off well, but we soon relapse and eventually give up completely.
Having failed we either look back at our efforts and tell ourselves that we could have succeeded if only we’d have done things differently — or that while the task is difficult, it’s not impossible, and the reward for succeeding make it worth giving it another go.
Fuelled by memories of our previous limited success and/or our positive expectations for the future, we try again.
Why Self-Change Attempts Fail
There are four common reasons why our efforts to change our behaviour fail: amount, speed, ease, and effects on other aspects of our life.
• Firstly, we think that we can make greater changes than is possible (e.g., lose more weight than is realistic) and reject more modest, more achievable, goals.
• Secondly, we think we’re going to achieve our goals more quickly than is reasonable (e.g., to lose a stone in a week).
• Thirdly, we think it’s going to be easier than it actually is (even when we know how difficult other people find it).
• Finally, we often think that making a change will have a bigger effect on our life than can realistically be expected (e.g., losing weight will lead to a job promotion or a romantic partner).
How We Set Ourselves Up for Failure — and What We Can Do About It
Framing
The way we frame our goals sets us up for failure from the start. More often than not, our goals involve not doing something — so we can only succeed if we never give in to temptation.
Every time we cave, therefore, we fail, and that makes it more likely that we’ll give up altogether.
A much better idea would be to frame our goals on what we can do (e.g., eating healthier eating, low-calorie meals) rather than on what we’re denying ourselves.
Intrusive Thoughts
A second problem is that the more we deny ourselves something, the more we think about it (the ‘Don’t think of a white bear’ phenomenon). To make matters worse, these intrusive thoughts become more frequent and more powerful when we’re under stress or have lots to do (which is never).
We tend to think that we can control our thoughts, so when we can’t control them, we can become overly self-critical and start to panic (even when we haven’t actually done anything to sabotage our efforts), leaving us with less willpower, and making it more likely that we’ll cave
Avoiding stressors, then, may help our efforts at successful self-change by stopping excessive intrusive thoughts or willpower depletion from sabotaging our efforts.
Making Goals Realistic
Finally, we can make the goals we set easier to achieve. If our goals are unrealistic, it doesn’t matter how well we manage our mental and physical resources, we’ll never achieve them.
The big problem is that we set our self-change goals because we see them as important, controllable, and desirable — and we expect big rewards for achieving them. But achieving big goals does not lead to the kinds of personal and social improvements that we think they will.
Setting unachievable targets also has a negative effect on our mood. Trying to achieve unachievable goals contributes to the onset and maintenance of depression (chasing the goal uses up the resources we need to achieve other, more realistic ones).
We’re more likely to succeed if our goals were adjusted to be more realistic — but more realistic goals don’t fit with our hopes and dreams. We’re not eager to take longer to reach our goals, reach a lesser goal, or tell ourselves that achieving our goals won’t produce the complete personal and social makeover that we’re convinced that it will.
Nor are we encouraged to do so.
The self-help industry thrives for two interrelated reasons — big promises and repeat custom. Big promises attract customers, but the sheer size of the promises (and our expectations about the fabulous rewards that will follow from this quick and painless process) means that, by definition, they can’t be achieved. Our consequent failure, rather than putting us off, just (somehow) sets us up for a repeat attempt; but not before we’ve bought our next self-help book or signed up for our next program.
Are your New Year’s resolutions realistic, or are you setting yourself up for failure before you even start?
