It’s time for a Resolution Revolution – January 17th – Happy Ditch the Revolution Day”. And do you know why? It’s because for many it’s the day that they end up falling back to their old habits and ditching their resolutions. So why do we bother setting them, when year after year, new year’s resolutions are shown to be as effective as a boat with a hole in it.If you have already given up on your new year’s resolution, don’t feel bad. There are a few reasons why resolutions (not you) fail:
1) Resolutions focus solely on the end result, not a plan on how you will get there.
2) Resolutions are too big and often there are too many to accomplish all at once.
3) Resolutions are based on someone else’s values (diet culture, etc) or whatever the “new and improved” fad is at the time.
When you add these up, you get what psychologists refer to as “False Hope Syndrome”. False Hope Syndrome is a bit of a paradox where people, despite past failures, feel overconfident with a self change attempt and then give up when they don’t see results fast enough.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t set ambitious goals for yourself or that the new year isn’t a good time to set those goals. What I am saying is maybe it’s time we ditch the resolution in favor of taking a look at the work you have been doing, set a new path, and focus on making small changes over a matter of months rather than overnight.
In his best selling book Atomic Habits, author James Clear teaches us his 1% rule. He tells us that rather than focusing on one huge goal or an end result, we should look for ways to improve ourselves by 1% each day. In the beginning 1% won’t appear to make a difference to you but as time goes on these small improvements will add up, become a habit and before you know it there will be a huge gap between where you were and where you are now.
James tells us that there are three rules for making and sticking to good habits. And I can tell you from experience that they work.
You have to start with a form of the habit that is so easy, and will take no time or effort to achieve. For example: Rather than saying I was to exercise more. Say “Today I’m going to walk 1000 steps”. (Which you probably do already)
1) Each day you must increase your activity/habit by a small amount: for example on day 2 you would add 100 more steps, which could easily be done by parking a little further when you go to work each day. Day 3 – 100 more, and so on.
2) As you increase your activity it still must remain easy. This is where you could break it up into sets. So let’s say you are walking 10,000 steps you could then try breaking it up into 2 sets of 5000 steps each.
3)I know these small goals may seem insignificant, especially when you are first starting out. But it sure beats going all in and quitting 2 weeks into it.
Small habits can add up pretty quickly and by creating the habit and staying consistent you have a better chance of succeeding with your end goal. Results can seem insignificant, especially in the beginning, but small habits can actually show incredible progress very quickly. Small steps + consistency = results that last.
So let’s not keep ourselves tied to new years resolutions any longer. You have to make small changes everyday, all year long if you want to see progress. Not just some make believe, magical time when we turn a new year. By making small, consistent changes you will also avoid the disappointment of trying to change a lifetime of bad habits over night.
So how are you going to celebrate “Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day?” For me this will be the second year in a row I ditched making a new year’s resolution. I will be celebrating my liberation of kicking resolutions to the curb. They don’t serve me now and never did. Instead I’ll be looking at, and reevaluating my life as a whole – body, mind and spirit, and finding meaningful reasons to make small changes everyday.
Now get out there and start living your best life. Loving who you are and taking those small consistent steps that are going to make you genuinely satisfied with your beautiful self.
