People who make their New Year’s resolutions as the clock strikes midnight on Jan. 1, 2003 are setting themselves up for failure, according to experts. People who think about their New Year’s resolutions for some time are more likely to fulfill their vow than those who come up with them at the last minute.
“The thing that causes the most problems for people is that they make their New Year’s resolutions impulsively — they haven’t thought it through, they haven’t considered the type of sacrifice that’s necessary to change. That’s a setup for failure,” said James Greer, a psychiatrist and clinical director of the Child and Family Unit at the Providence Center. “You have to have a commitment to the change that you want to make. Some of that is going to be demonstrated by the work that you put into thinking about the resolution before the New Year begins.”
A 1999 study on New Year’s resolutions by psychologists at the University of Washington supports Greer’s assessment. The researchers found that most people keep the promise they put at the top of their list, at least for awhile. They found that 63 percent of the 264 people they questioned remained faithful to their No. 1 resolution for at least two months.
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The research also found that people making New Year’s resolutions are more willing to make a personal vow to do something they know is right than to give up something they know is wrong.
In the survey, conducted chiefly over the Internet, 84 percent of those surveyed vowed to start doing something like exercising, which was the most common resolution of all, according to the report’s authors. Only 44 persons vowed to give up something like smoking.
Elizabeth Miller conducted the survey, at the time a doctoral candidate in psychology, and Alan Marlatt, director of the university’s Addictive Behaviors Research Center. Participants in the study ranged in age from 18 to 66, 54 percent were female and most—90 percent—live in the Seattle area. They were interviewed twice.
Responding to a poll, 37 percent of people who made a New Year’s resolution vowed to get more exercise; 23 percent resolved to devote more time to study or work; 13 percent vowed to eat better. But only 7 percent wanted to reduce the use of tobacco, alcohol, caffeine or other drugs.
The study suggests that people can be reasonably confident about embarking on a new healthy behavior, like getting more exercise. But breaking a bad habit may be far more difficult. Numerous research projects over the years have shown that addiction, especially to drugs like nicotine, is one of the hardest behavioral traits to modify.
According to the survey, only 40 percent of those who achieve the top goal on their list of resolutions do so on the first try. The rest try over and over again, with 17 percent succeeding after more than six attempts.
“The important thing is to not make the resolutions an all-or-nothing thing. Especially when you’re giving up things that you know are unhealthy, like smoking, make a firm commitment, spend time developing coping strategies and identifying pitfalls,” said Greer. “What often happens is, two weeks into the New Year you go to a bar and have a couple of drinks with friends and wind up have a smoke, and then you start smoking again. You need to build into it the understanding that it’s not a one-shot deal, a commitment to change and acknowledgement that change is not an easy thing to do. Using that initial failure to identify a barrier you hadn’t seen before is a really good way to look at things. Each failed attempt can be a learning experience.”
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