Why do so many New Year’s resolutions succeed when people are trying to avoid them? Here are three of the most common culprits—and what you’re doing wrong to make you achieve your goals.
Tip #1: Make Sure Your Resolutions Are as Vague as Possible
If you really want to avoid achieving your New Year’s resolutions like a boss, make sure your goals are hard to define—and this is really important—lack concrete ways to mark progress.
Example? “I’m going to exercise more this year.”
How much more? 10 days? An hour? 5 minutes more than last year?
Does that mean you already kept your New Year’s resolution by accident yesterday when you had to go up and down all those stairs? I mean, they were escalators but still, had to have burned some calories, right? I feel unmotivated already!
Being this unclear about what you’re going to do is a great way to set yourself up to let yourself down in the new year.
Tip #2: Think Negative!
Another problem people face when trying to avoid their New Year’s resolutions is framing them with positive language. By cultivating a negative mindset about your goals, you’re tricking your mind into thinking more about the opposite outcome.
If you truly want to set yourself up for failure, make sure your internal monologue is something like “I need to stop eating so much junk food. I’m so unhealthy, I need to stop eating so much junk food. I just need to stop eating so much of that delicious junk food.”
See how we turned something positive on its ear, just by thinking about it in a negative way?
A common mistake people might make when they want to avoid this resolution is to accidentally frame it as “I’m going to have oatmeal instead of a sausage biscuit with my coffee every morning, and start eating carrot sticks as a snack while I work.”
Not only is this language affirmative—rather than making you feel like you’ve already failed before you start—but it’s also a lot easier to tell whether you’re doing it or not. Recall tip #1—the most avoidable resolutions are amorphous, hard to track, and mindfully unclear.
If you’re like me, you want to see things that are visible, feel things that are tangible, and achieve things that are possible.
So remember, as Winston Churchill famously warned: "The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”
Tip #3: Remember — Your New Year’s Resolutions aren’t about You
This is a big one, so pay attention—to really avoid achieving your New Year’s Resolutions, make sure they don’t come from within. You need to make them reflect what you think other people want you to do.
It seems obvious, but don’t get inspired by what you want, draw inspiration from what other people expect from you. Or at least what you think they expect from you. If you don’t know, make something up!
When I see people setting resolutions that align with what they want—let alone ones that are unique to them (shudder)—all I can do is shrug my shoulders, shake my head, tap my toe, and moonwalk away.
I make sure to let them know this, too. Usually via Twitter, because I’ve got a lot of opinions people need to hear. I like to call them something condescending like “chief,” also, when I remember.
Expecting to avoid your New Year’s resolutions when it’s something specific you literally want instead of something vague and unmeasurable that you think the people around you want? #smdh #tmt (tapping my toe)
