Motivation
The Failed New Year’s Resolution: Three Tips to Get on Track
Skills that can help you change your habits.
Posted January 31, 2024 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- It's common to struggle with New Year's resolutions.
- Self-compassion is more effective than self-criticism for staying motivated.
- Defining value-focused intentions can offer more flexibility than setting all-or-nothing resolutions.
- DBT offers many behavior change skills for overcoming barriers to reaching goals.
January is officially over, and many people are taking stock of their progress towards New Year’s resolutions. If you made any resolutions this year, it’s very possible (and even likely) that you haven’t kept up with them as much as you would have hoped.
But that’s not your fault. Humans have a cognitive bias called the planning fallacy that makes us tend to underestimate how much time or effort it takes to reach goals. Additionally, most people haven’t been taught skills for setting goals and maintaining new habits. As a result, many people make unrealistic resolutions or have trouble sticking to them.
Old habits tend to die hard, and new habits tend to die easy.
If you feel like you have already failed, here are three tips before you let go.
1. Practice self-compassion
Many people talk to themselves in harsh and disparaging ways when they struggle with new habits because they believe that self-criticism will help them reach their goals. Usually, these people have been taught by their families and culture that criticism is an effective or necessary motivator.
Research shows, however, that the opposite is true. Practicing self-compassion appears to increase motivation for personal improvement, particularly in the face of “failure.” [1, 2, 3]
If you've been down on yourself about not keeping your resolutions, try self-compassion. Encourage yourself with gentleness and warmth, or talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend, child, spouse, or other loved one. Self-soothe, engaging in sensory activities that offer you comfort or relaxation. Use validation skills to recognize the experiences and difficulties you've been having. Treat yourself with kindness. Kristen Neff, Ph.D., provides many other excellent exercises and resources for self-compassion.
2. Change your resolutions into intentions
Resolutions are often phrased as very definitive goals. I will exercise daily. I will not eat dessert. I will stop gossiping about my friends. Setting specific behavioral goals can sometimes be very effective. But, setting all-or-nothing goals can lead to all-or-nothing decisions that one gives up when reaching those goals is difficult.
Instead, some people benefit from setting New Year’s intentions. Intentions focus more on your values and what’s important to you, rather than what specifically you plan to do. For example, the resolution “I will exercise daily” may become an intention of “I want to move my body in ways that feel good.”
Intentions lead to more mindful, repeated check-ins with yourself about how you’re living your life, rather than becoming things to check off the to-do list. They focus on the positive (“I want to be a compassionate person with integrity”) rather than the negative (“I won’t gossip”). They offer more flexibility when life throws unexpected stress at you.
If you’re tempted to give up on your resolutions completely, consider re-phrasing them into intentions instead. What kind of person do you want to be? What about your resolution is important to you? Why did you want to make this behavior change in the first place? The answers to those questions can help you find your valued intentions.
3. Problem-solve barriers effectively
Of course, it’s okay if you’d still like to exercise daily or stop gossiping. Practicing self-compassion and identifying intentions are not incompatible with setting resolutions or other goals.
If you are struggling to maintain your desired habits, there are techniques from evidence-based therapies available to help you. Dialectical behavior therapy, for example, offers numerous skills for helping people change their behaviors.
One such skill is called missing links analysis. This analysis asks you to identify the specific barriers or obstacles that are leading to you forgo something that you want to do. Perhaps you keep forgetting the new habit, perhaps you don’t understand how to do the new habit, or perhaps someone else keeps preventing you from doing it. Whatever it is, identify the barrier and then problem-solve and cope ahead for that barrier specifically.
This problem-solving process can be difficult. You may need to repeat it several times. You may need help from a therapist or trusted friend. You may need to learn other skills for overcoming the various types of logistical and emotional barriers that interfere with starting new habits. DBT offers a lot of other skills that can be useful, as does acceptance and commitment therapy. You can always return to self-compassion and intention-setting when specific goal-setting feels out of reach for you.
References
Breines, J. G., & Chen, S. (2012). Self-compassion increases self-improvement motivation. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 38(9), 1133-1143.
Magnus, C. M., Kowalski, K. C., & McHugh, T. L. F. (2010). The role of self-compassion in women's self-determined motives to exercise and exercise-related outcomes. Self and identity, 9(4), 363-382.
Zhang, J. W., & Chen, S. (2016). Self-compassion promotes personal improvement from regret experiences via acceptance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(2), 244-258.
