by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Are you making any New Year’s resolutions?
If so, you’re among the estimated 40-45 percent of adults who make at least one resolution.
“Unfortunately, it seems that a great many New Year’s resolutions are not kept,” said Jacksonville management psychologist Suzanne Montgomery.
If you abandon the goal by February, then you join the majority of people who make resolutions.
Making a New Year’s resolution is widely considered a centuries-old tradition that has evolved into the frequently cited pledges to lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, work harder and become more organized.
While the tradition began long before, the modern form of New Year’s resolutions has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac” published in 1738.
Franklin wrote why it was important to stop old habits and start new ones. “Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout,” wrote Franklin, according to the Yahoo! Contributor Network.
Jacksonville executive coach Doug Wilder said he’s often asked why a person would set a resolution, only to give up on it by February.
Here’s why, he said.
“You know the saying, ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ So it is with setting resolutions or goals,” said Wilder.
Wilder, president of Wilder Business Success Inc., said the pessimist wants to avoid disappointment. Making and quitting a resolution isn’t a plan for success.
At the same time, that also means there’s no joy in victory or even the thrill of the challenge.
“Is it better for a struggling football team to not try to achieve goals for fear of disappointment? No, it is the thrill of the hunt, not just the catch, that makes life worth living, and success is more likely to come to optimists.” said Wilder.
He offered some suggestions on making successful resolutions:
• Make a list of the factors in your life that you’d like to change. Some might be big, such as a job or a relationship, and some might be small, such as fixing a broken piece of pottery or organizing a pile of clutter. Some might require quick action and some might necessitate changing an entrenched habit.
• Prioritize the list, in A and B columns, for the changes that would bring you the greatest amount of joy. Narrow the important A list to a manageable one to six changes. File or throw away the B list.
• On the A list, visualize the satisfaction and joy you would receive from the accomplishment. Write down what you visualize. This will be your motivation, so express your deepest emotions.
• Decide when you want to start and complete the change. Be specific on the dates.
• Set a way to measure and monitor your progress. Write down the specifics of how you will know you are moving toward and will finally reach your goal.
• Resolve to win.
• Tell people about your resolution who can encourage you and hold you accountable.
The Psyche Central online mental health and psychology network reported that some research confirms that setting a resolution can bring you closer to your goals.
It said that one study found that 46 percent of individuals who made resolutions were successful, compared to 4 percent who wanted to achieve a certain goal and considered it but didn’t actually create a resolution.
Montgomery said when people make a goal based on an artificial deadline, such as New Year’s, “we have ambivalence about it, or we would have done it earlier.”
“A part of us wants to make the change and part of us does not,” she said.
“The part of ourselves that really does not want to change is always lurking, waiting for a weak moment to sabotage the change effort,” she said.
To support making a change, her suggestion is the same as Wilder’s, which is to write down the goal and the steps to take to reach it.
But there’s also developing a response “to that bratty voice of sabotage.” Such as, “that cake looks so good,” with the reply, “yes, it will attach itself to my gut and look really good there.”
If a person slips on the way to the goal, realize “you are human and the battle is won with long-term behavior change,” said Montgomery.
“You can overcome a slip-up,” she said.
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