Episode 114: Setting New Year’s Resolutions Without The Hype
In today’s episode, I am talking about why resolutions are so triggering and what the research shows for setting helpful resolutions.
Eating too much sugar? No problem! In January I will cut back.
Not working out? No problem! In January I will hit the gym.
Postponing our plans for change looks great under the glow of the holiday lights. But when we wake up each year on January 1st, hungover from too much celebrating, realizing with dread, that all of our plans for change in the New Year need to magically start RIGHT NOW, it is a very different story.
All of the plans that we have been putting off until the New Year are suddenly very real and very pressing. We need to get it together and act before our Monger catches on.
The deadline had arrived.
For people with High Functioning Anxiety, the days leading up to the New Year are days full of possibility. Set the resolution, do the prep work, and, poof like magic, we will be different people.
No wonder we are so depressed come the first week of January when we realize that the change we want is only going to happen with work and that the work is going to be hard.
We were so focused on how amazing it would be once the change was done that we didn’t take into account what it would actually take to stop eating sugar or to work out every morning. We didn’t take into account the process of change.
Throughout the month of January, we will be discussing this process of change with helpful tips and strategies for making small changes in your life without all the hype.
Today we will be talking about why resolutions are so triggering and what the research shows for setting helpful resolutions.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
Why New Year’s can be very anxiety-inducing for people with High Functioning Anxiety
What the research actually shows about making resolutions for change in the New Year
What we can do about it once we know the research and identify our own tendencies
5 tips for not falling prey to the romance of New Year’s eve
How to embrace this New Year with a fresh outlook, new tools, and--yes--a happier approach.
Some of the research and resources:
Research by University of Scranton Psychology Professor John C. Norcross, Ph.D
Research by Ayelet Fishbach, University of Chicago, and Kaitlin Woolley, Cornell University
Prelude to the Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Work with Me: Coach in Your Pocket
+ Read the Transcript
I have always hated New Year’s. The whole event. New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day. Drinking too much, feeling hungover, the parties, the pork, the sauerkraut. Everything about it I hated. And I never knew why.
Then I realized…
...it was the pressure.
For the month of December, I would quiet my Monger by saying, in January, I will make all these changes. ANYTHING she would criticize me about, I would respond by saying just wait until the new year.
Eating too much sugar? No problem, in JANUARY I will be a better person.
Not working out? No problem, in JANUARY I will be a better person.
I would spend the last week of December planning for all the magical changes I would make come January, I would be healthier, more organized, focused, and calm. Because Of course, I want to make all those changes while being calm and peaceful.
“You’re listening to The Happier Approach—the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. I’m your host, Nancy Jane Smith.”
For people with HFA leading up to the new year is the BEST. Full of possibilities, full of ideas, and a borderline delusional belief that we will magically be different people.
January 1st is the day we will finally make ourselves perfect.
So when I woke up on January 1st each year, I not only was hungover from too much celebrating now the deadline had arrived.
NOW I really needed to get my shit together before my Monger figured out that the new year wasn’t really magical. It is like the world’s worst hangover because one, you might actually be hungover from celebrating, and two, you realize all the expectations for change and motivation needed to start NOW.
One look at Facebook or Instagram, and it only gets worse. You’re bombarded by everyone’s New Year’s Resolutions and inspiring words of the year. It seems like the people who have it together only get it more together…
...and the rest of us? Well, the overwhelming message is, YOU ARE NOT OK AND YOU NEED TO BE SOMETHING ELSE. In other words, you MUST CHANGE in order to BE BETTER, and more importantly, ONCE YOU DO CHANGE, THEN YOU WILL BE HAPPY.
All these beliefs are like Cat-nip for those of us with HFA. The memes and messages make it look SO easy. Our BFFs make us believe that it will be magical: Have the desire to change, set the resolution, do the prep work, and poof like magic, we will be different people. It is like magic, the calendar will flip to January, and we will be different people. No wonder I was so depressed. Come the first week of January, I woke up to the realization that if the change was going to happen, I needed to do the work. AND the work was HARD. I was so focused on the outcome of the change how amazing I will BE once the change is done I didn’t account for what it would be like to ACTUALLY stop eating sugar or to work out every morning. I didn’t account for the process of change.
Happy New Year!! Welcome to 2020! All this month, we are talking about Resolutions. For people with High Functioning anxiety, this time of year can be VERY anxiety-provoking, so I want to bring that anxiety out into the open and talk about how we can do it differently.
In this episode, we will be talking about why resolutions are so triggering and what the research shows for setting helpful resolutions. Throughout the month, you will hear helpful tips and strategies for making small changes in your life without all the hype.
Let’s start with some research statistics. Now, I LOVE research, and research is something that gets misquoted and shifted to fit the expectations of the user. Resolution Research is a great example of this phenomenon. A commonly quoted stat is that the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions is said to be about 80 percent, and most lose their resolve by mid-February.
I saw that sentence quoted over and over in US World Report, Forbes, and numerous blogs. I had to really search to find the source of that quote. The stat is from Research by University of Scranton Psychology Professor John C. Norcross, Ph.D., internationally recognized as an authority on behavior change and psychotherapy.
In Norcross’s abstract, the actual stat is 77% of people maintained their pledges for 1 week and only 19% for 2 years. So the stat that is quoted is 80% of people fail on their resolutions is a bit more doom and gloom than the reality.
In reality, 19% keep their resolutions for more than 2 years, and those other 77% might keep them longer than one week! Norcross goes on to say that Fifty-three percent of the successful group experienced at least one slip, and the mean number of slips over the 2-year interval was 14. 14 slip-ups!!! 14 do-overs. Fourteen mess-ups, and that was the average which means there were more than 14 slip-ups.
Norcross also found that you are 10-times more likely to change the desired behavior if you make a New Year’s resolution than if you don’t.
According to his research, 46 percent of those making a resolution were successful at changing their target behavior after six months, compared to only 4 percent of adults desiring to change their behavior who did not make a resolution.
And the last bit of research to share is a meta-analysis (I had to look up what a meta-analysis is too, which means they use a statistical approach to combine the results from multiple studies) led by Ayelet Fishbach from the University of Chicago and Cornell University’s Kaitlin Woolley, looked at participants’ commitment to resolutions based on delayed vs. immediate rewards.” They found in layman’s terms that: people were less likely to commit to a goal that didn’t offer an immediate (or at least an immediately obvious) pay-off.
So what we have learned from research is:
Most people who set resolutions quit at them.
Those who are successful at their resolutions frequently mess up and then regroup. They make mistakes frequently.
You are more likely to change if you make an intention about changing. In other words, if you don’t try, you won’t change.
Change is easier when you have immediate gratification.
Now that we know the facts let’s talk resolutions and HFA.
As I shared in the beginning, those of us with HFA LOVE the IDEA of improving ourselves because, in our minds, we have LOTS to improve. The magical myth of new year’s is almost too much to resist. It is like catnip to us. The idea that with the turn of the calendar, all that we dislike about ourselves can be changed. Logically WE KNOW it isn’t true, I mean, we aren’t totally delusional, and yet it addicting.
Knowing the research and knowing that we are addicted to HFA, what can we do about it? How can we not fall prey to the romance of new year’s eve?
Here are my tips:
Be HONEST with yourself notice your tendency to romance New Year’s remember the quote, “wherever you go, there you are.” You are the same person you are now that you will be in February. You didn’t magically change on NYE, and you won’t magically change every.
Change is slow. All change requires baby steps. When you think you have a small step, break it down even smaller. Want to eat healthier? A small step would be to avoid sugar. A smaller step would be to avoid sugar after 7pm. Or avoid sugar after lunch. Do that for a period of time, and then when you have mastered it, make another SMALL change.
Celebrate. Celebrate the small changes. Your Monger will ALWAYS be critical that you didn’t do enough or didn’t do it right. But remember to celebrate the small victories.
You will MESS UP. As research shows, you will mess up. Every time you mess up, use it as a chance to re-calibrate. Do you need to make the goal smaller? Remind yourself that mistakes are part of change.
What if your change this year was to be more kind to yourself? Change is so much easier when we are doing it from a place of kindness. I am going to eat less sugar because I FEEL healthier, or I am going to walk every day because I feel better when I move my body?
I am going to leave you with excerpts from one of my favorite poems: Prelude to the Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of your own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?
How would this affect your search for spiritual development?
What if there is no need to change, no need to try and transform yourself into someone who is more compassionate, more present, more loving, or wise?
How would this affect all the places in your life where you are endlessly trying to be better?
What if the task is simply to unfold, to become who you already are in your essential nature - gentle, compassionate, and capable of living fully and passionately present?
How would this affect how you feel when you wake up in the morning?
What if who you essentially are right now is all that you are ever going to be?
How would this affect how you feel about your future?
What if the essence of who you are and always have been is enough?
How would this affect how you see and feel about your past?
What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?
How would this change what you think you have to learn?
It’s all about kindness. If you can be kind to yourself, if you can allow yourself to make mistakes and mess it up and break those changes down to very small increments, resolutions work, they allow you to change, to grow, to become a different person.
But that doesn’t mean you have to be better. You are. Just where you are. And I know that’s impossible to believe with high functioning anxiety, but trust me, I’m going to repeat the quote again from Oriah Mountain Dreamer because it’s one of my favorites. What if the question is not, why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?
High Functioning Anxiety can be at its worst around the New Year. Whether it’s your resolutions or everyone else’s, you can feel yourself regularly cycling through scripts that tell you you’re not good enough unless you’re flawless, constantly available, and solving everyone else’s problems.
I’d love to help you embrace this new year with a fresh outlook, new tools, and--yes--a happier approach. I specialize in helping women like you living with High Functioning Anxiety to let go and make peace themselves.
Plus, coaching with me doesn’t have to take up tons of room in your already full schedule.
Here’s how it works:
First, we meet for an extended 90-minute session to uncover your stories and habits. You know, the ones that keep you stuck.
Then, you continue to work with me on-demand through an app that lets you leave a message for me any time you start to feel anxious or whenever you feel the Monger attack. I’ll get back to you with action steps for moving through the discomfort and finding peace. Plus, you’ll continue to meet with me for monthly sessions, too.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.