It’s that time of year when most Americans make New Year’s resolutions.
Keeping them? Well, that’s a different matter.
While two-thirds of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, fewer than 1 in 10 keep them, according to data compiled by the personal finance website WalletHub.
That doesn’t surprise John Hawkins. As a licensed professional counselor and therapist in Columbus, Hawkins devotes much of his time helping his clients change habits, behaviors, beliefs and attitudes, all of which come into play when making New Year’s resolutions.
That so many fail to succeed, Hawkins said, can be attributed to a variety of reasons.
“I guess you could start with Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that any ‘how’ is possible if there is a strong enough ‘why,'” Hawkins said. “When I’m doing change with my clients, I ask ‘Why do you want to get rid of this behavior or that?’ Most people say they just want to be happy, but emotional happiness comes and goes.
“You need to have a really good reason to do it,” he added. “It has to be your reason, not someone else’s — a spouse, maybe your doctor or even your boss. You have to have a really good reason, a really good ‘why.’ That might take some time. It’s often a lot more complicated than it might appear.”
According to WalletHub, of those who do make resolutions, many make more than one. The most common resolution is weight loss/exercise (49 percent) followed by improving personal finances (33 percent), education/career advancement (26 percent) and habits/behavior modifications (16 percent).
In each case, Hawkins said those who fail often do so because they approach the change too broadly.
“It should be one thing at a time, ” Hawkins said. “People will write down a whole lot of resolutions and, most of the time, they are lifestyle changes — losing weight, for example. But these are very complex endeavors. My suggestion is to make the list of things you want to change and take them one at a time. Lay it out in very concrete terms, what we call SMART goals, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based.
“You break it down into pieces and take it step by step,” he added. “It may seem like you are taking baby steps, but that’s how real change works.”
One of the reasons breaking old habits is difficult is because of our mental and emotional “wiring,” Hawkins said.
“The neuro-pathways in our brains are wired to what we do, our habits and our routines.” Hawkins said. “In many cases, what we do is not even a conscious thought. If you put on your pants by putting your left leg in first, that’s not something you think to do. You just do it. But if you put your left leg in first, that requires a conscious decision.
“Habits are like that,” he continued. “They are our default setting. When you are making a change, you are replacing one habit, the default setting, with a new habit. But that old habit never goes away. You’re just building a new habit over the old one.”
In the early stages of change, Hawkins said, the old habit is stronger than the new one people are trying to adopt. That’s when people most often give up.
But there are many strategies to help win that fight, Hawkins noted, such as having an accountability partner, changing their environment and recording the process.
He said people who are beginning to exercise especially benefit from having an accountability partner — someone else to work out with them or a personal trainer. If your goal is to lose weight, he said a change of environment might help, like making sure there are healthy food choices available instead of poor ones. And Hawkins said studies show the act of writing down what you do is a powerful incentive to stay on track.
As for New Year’s resolutions, Hawkins said it’s not something he ever pursues.
“If there is something I want to change, today is always the day to do it,” He said. “For my depressive patients, they live in the past. For my anxiety patients, they live in the future. But the only place we can live is right now, today.
“If you want to change, don’t look at the calendar,” he later added. “Today is the day to do it, no matter what the calendar says.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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