Keep Your New Year's Resolutions for 2024
At the start of each year, people set resolutions—personal promises for positive change in areas like health, career, and personal growth. However, almost half of people report quitting their resolutions by the end of January. Maintaining New Year's resolutions goes beyond initial motivation, offering a path to increased confidence, accomplishment, and overall life improvement. Enter Behavior Modification Therapy, a powerful tool for resolution success. Behavior modification techniques tackle routines and behaviors, providing practical strategies for sustained commitment. In the following sections, we'll delve into specific CBT techniques for lasting New Year's resolutions.
Brainstorming the Best New Year Resolution Ideas
The first step in developing a lasting New Year's resolution is coming up with one that is inspiring enough to stick with for a whole year.
Start by reflecting on various aspects of your life—health, relationships, career, personal growth, and hobbies. Consider what changes would bring fulfillment and positive impact in the coming year.
Jot down both short-term and long-term goals for the year, ensuring they align with your values and aspirations. Don't shy away from exploring new interests or revisiting past passions.
Seek inspiration from role models, books, or online resources.
Collaborate with friends or family in brainstorming, exchanging ideas, and gaining diverse perspectives.
Pick one, and no more than one resolution for the next year. Any more, and you're making it exponentially difficult to keep. Master one thing first, and then you can evaluate whether you want to tackle another goal. Remember, resolutions are personal, so focus on areas that resonate with you and will contribute to your overall well-being and happiness this year.
Sample New Year's Resolution Ideas
Here's a list of New Year's resolution ideas to help get you started:
Prioritize Mental Health
Stay Active
Spend More Time With Family and Nurture Relationships
Practice Gratitude to Improve Mental Health
Embrace Learning
Achieve Work-Life Balance to Reduce Stress
Healthy Eating Habits
Save More Money for Financial Wellness
Disconnect from Technology
Cultivate a mindfulness practice
Behavior Modification Techniques to Create a Lasting Habit
The following tools are evidence-based behavior modification techniques to make the change process easier and long-lasting:
Setting SMART Goals: Prioritize SMART Resolutions
Once you have a New Year's resolution you'd like to commit to, make sure it's a SMART GOAL. A SMART goal is a specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objective designed to provide clear and tangible criteria for tracking progress and achieving success. Making your goal a SMART goal increases the likelihood of successfully sticking to your new skill or behavior all year.
Specific
A specific goal is concrete. There should be no question whether or not you completed it. Instead of saying, "I want to exercise more," make a plan to jog for 30 minutes three times a week this year.
Measurable
A measurable goal allows you to track progress. Rather than a vague goal like "I want to save money," a measurable goal would be to save $500 per month.
Achievable
You want to pick a goal that you are confident you can achieve. Otherwise, you'll quickly be demoralized and give up. An example would be to lose 1-2 pounds per week by adopting a balanced diet and regular exercise, not to lose 15 pounds in a week.
Relevant
Make sure the goal is aligned with broader objectives and ensure its importance. If you're not planning a trip or are interested in another language, learning a new language may not be the best goal for you this year. A relevant goal is to enroll in a Spanish course to prepare for an upcoming international business meeting.
Time-bound
Making a goal time-bound has two benefits. One, creating a deadline can help with momentum and accountability. Two, limiting the goal to a period of time with an end increases the likelihood that you'll keep the resolution. Instead of an open-ended goal like "I want to write a book," a time-bound goal is "I will complete the first draft of my novel within six months, writing at least 500 words daily."
Incorporating these SMART criteria ensures that your goals are well-defined, achievable, and anchored within a specific timeframe, increasing the likelihood of successful accomplishment.
Positive Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a fundamental concept in psychology and behaviorism, involving increasing the likelihood of future behaviors by associating them with rewarding consequences. When a behavior is naturally reinforcing, the reward we feel when we do it maintains the behavior all on its own, without much effort from us. New behaviors, however, are not as naturally reinforcing until they become habitual. Providing a small reward for yourself, such as buying yourself a coffee drink, having an enjoyable snack, or even playing enjoyable music, can make a new behavior more enjoyable and, thus, more likely to stick to.
Punishment Avoidance
Punishment avoidance is a way of modifying behavior by reinforcing it by avoiding a negative consequence. An example is creating a deadline or quota for the desired behavior, then assigning a negative consequence if the deadline or quota isn't met. For example, donating to a charity you find objectionable if you haven't made it to the gym by 9:00 PM. If you pick the right consequence, the threat of the consequence can be enough to motivate your behavior. I also recommend pairing it with a positive reinforcer, as positive reinforcement is usually a more powerful motivator.
Modeling
Modeling is the behavioral modification technique of observing and imitating others who exhibit the new behavior we want to engage in. You can use it to stick to your resolution by identifying role models who inspire and guide habit formation. For instance, if you want to eat healthier, follow a fitness influencer on social media to get intermittent inspiration from them.
Self-Monitoring
One of the easiest ways of changing your behavior is through self-monitoring. A whole body of scientific research has shown that just the act of tracking a behavior can positively influence it. For instance, if you're trying to quit smoking, keep a tracking form in your pack of cigarettes at all times. If you smoke, pull out the form and log it. Over time, you'll find behaviors that once seemed automatic become easier and easier to change. Hundreds of apps can help you track everything from learning vocabulary to working out, making the process much less effortful.
Shaping and Successive Approximation
Shaping, also called successive approximation, is the gradual reinforcement of behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior. The process starts by reinforcing any behavior that even remotely resembles the target behavior and then gradually refining the criteria for reinforcement as the subject gets closer to the desired behavior. If your New Year's resolution is to improve a relationship with a family member, but you have difficulty even having a conversation with them, you can start small by sending them friendly text messages or doing nice things for them. Once that becomes habitual, speaking to them in person for short bursts becomes easier. From there, you can gradually work up to more and more difficult behaviors, which become easier, having become accustomed to the less challenging behaviors.
Stimulus Control
Stimulus control is the behavioral intervention of modifying the environment to facilitate the desired behavior. There are many things you can do to, for example, reduce drinking. But nothing is as effective as removing all the alcohol from your house and avoiding bars and cocktail parties.
Social Support and Accountability
Involving friends, family, or a support group to encourage and monitor your progress can help begin a new, difficult habit. Sharing your goals with others can help foster a sense of accountability and provide a network of sources of encouragement and validation.
Set New Goals By Adding, Not Subtracting
Finally, one thing people do wrong when trying to keep a New Year's resolution is to make it harder on themselves by setting a goal that is too ambitious or difficult to keep up with. One way of avoiding this is to pick goals of addition versus subtraction. If you're trying to lose weight, setting a behavioral goal of eating less can be very difficult. Just the idea that you're depriving yourself is aversive, thus setting the stage for giving up early. Instead of subtracting food you like, add a food that's healthy and full of fiber. It's much easier to add a salad to every meal than to give up foods you enjoy. Adding a salad and eating it first makes you fuller faster, reducing the need to give up foods you enjoy.
Work With A Professional
Some goals are challenging to tackle on your own. And with goals involving improving mental and physical health, the stakes can be too high to risk failure. Working with a qualified mental health professional trained in cognitive-behavioral therapy, such as a clinical psychologist, can be an invaluable investment in these cases. Mental health professionals know what works and can help you save time, energy, and heartache by knowing what challenges to look out for to set you up for success. If you'd like to speak to a mental health professional to determine whether working with a cognitive-behavioral therapist is right for you, click the link below.