We are almost done with the month of February, it's a good time to reflect on how you're doing with your New Year's resolutions. We all know that people start out with good intentions but that after several weeks to a month, resolutions often are forgotten or superceded by other priorities. Why does this happen and what can you do about it? Basically, resolutions are nothing more than goals. So the same principles and guidelines which apply to goal setting and accomplishment apply to what we call resolutions. Some experts note that one principal reason for why you fall away from your resolution or goal is that the present overwhelmns the future. Let’s say you are at work and choose to get your files better organized. That goal takes you into the future. However, if your supervisor dictates other priorities for you, then that present directive may relegate your well intentioned goal/resolution to incompletion. So what can you do? Well, based on what we know about goal setting, here are five recommendations:
1. Make it public. It long has been a tenet of social psychology that a public commitment to a goal has a better chance of accomplishment than a private commitment you keep to yourself. So tell someone you trust and who hopefully will support you in your effort.
2. Set milestone markers. This is the idea of breaking down the goal/resolution into smaller but accomplishable pieces. We've all heard the joke which goes like this: "How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time". When you break down your goal into smaller pieces, it will be less overwhelmning.
3. Use "if/then" statements to form new habits. You can get more done by using this strategy. Put your goals into these kinds of statements and you will be more likely to stay with it. For example, using the file organization task, you might decide to break it down alphabetically, e.g. do files beginning with A or B at a particular time such as Tuesday at 3 PM. Your statement might go like this: If it's Tuesday at 3 PM, then I work on organizing files labeled A and B. When you accomplish that, rework it for C and D, etc.
4. Don't think too positively. Now this probably seems odd coming from a psychologist who talks about positive/growth mindsets. However, Dr. Gabriele Oettingen noted that "too much optimism about a goal gets in the way of the energy needed to reach it, people feel accomplished, it's accompanied by a kind of relaxation". Then you do less. Rather, combine your positive energy with a recognition of the obstacles, sometimes referred to as "mental contrasting". If you combine this with #3, the "if/then" strategy, you will have a better chance of maintaining progress toward your goal/resolution.
5. Look for other fresh starts. I use this strategy frequently for myself and clients. If your goals are not working out at this point, pick another milestone. There are many natural break points in life, e.g start of a new week or month, an anniversary of something important to you, a particular holiday, a Sunday reflection day. Any can be effective to help motivate you to make progress. So just because you got off the track by now, pick a new time to begin and use the other strategies and stick with your goal/resolution. After all, you don't want to be the person whose goal is to cease smoking who says "quitting smoking is easy, I've done it a thousand times".
Using all the strategies can help you achieve more than you thought. If you slip, disrupt the tendency to berate yourself and overgeneralize, e.g. "I never follow through on things" which is simply not true and results in disruptive levels of stress. For detailed information about stress and changing your thoughts, please read our book (I Can’t Take It Anymore: How to Manage Stress so It Doesn’t Manage You; Paul G. Longobardi, Ph.D., and Janice B. Longobardi, R.N., B.S.N., P.H.N.), available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542458056. For information about the authors, book, and stress management, please see our website at www.manageyourhealthandstress.com.
You can make this the year you accomplish more than you thought. Good luck in your journey.
Dr. Paul Longobardi
For information on these and related topics, please go to my website at www.successandmindset.com