George
We have all done it, gone to the gym the first week of January to see it swarming full of newbies. Freshly sweaty faces giving it their all and promising to stick to it to shift the Christmas podge and keep their New Year's resolution. Then you go in the second week and there are a few less people, but only a couple, so it's just marginally noticeable. This trend continues for the remaining two weeks of January, and then February hits. That is when you notice. For the most part, the gym just becomes regulars again. You will have the odd expectation, like Cheryl from accounts may stay for another couple of weeks if she feels particularly inspired, but that's about it. This is just one example of failed New Year's resolutions. So I have often wondered, why do we make New Year's resolutions just to fail them?
To answer that question we need to go back to the beginning of the tradition of New Year's resolutions. They actually date way back to two thousand BC with the Babylonians and the first documented New Year's celebrations along with resolutions. That means we have been making these resolutions as people for over four thousand years! Now I'm not sure if the Babylonians were any better at keeping them. Maybe they were and just over time, in a fashion similar to Chinese whispers, we have just gotten progressively worse at sticking with them. Whatever the case it's fascinating to me that this tradition of creating resolutions at New Year and no other specific time of the year has stood the test of time for so long.
As the tradition of New Year's resolutions has continued we as humans have found ways of not committing to the whole month, take dry January for example. Someone says they are doing a dry January and you are so proud of them and congratulating them as a whole month without booze is an achievement. But was that actually their goal or was their resolution to drink less alcohol this year, so they do that for January and then the rest of the year continue to drink like a fish as they were before? I'm not saying that sticking to a new habit for just a month isn't something to be proud of, as it most certainly is, but I am suggesting if you can do a month why not two, or three or all year? Or is this just a sneaky way we have found as humans to not commit to the resolution for the whole year?
I have read in so many places that it takes twenty-eight days to form a habit and months are twenty-eight to thirty-one; January happens to be thirty-one. So in theory if for January you stuck to the gym, no alcohol or whatever your selected resolution was then it should be a habit and sustainable for the rest of the year. And if it wasn't a habit you picked then the new habits around it should be imbedded instead, e.g. running instead of having a glass of wine after work. This then begs the question: Is it the initial twenty-eight days people struggle with? Because, touching back on the dry January idea, people that I have known to have attempted it have either been successful and continued longer or had cheat days due to a birthday or some other choice excuse. Could it be as humans we aren't being sneaky and sticking to a month but instead pretending to do a month with chosen breaks, meaning no real commitment or habit changes are actually being made at the start of the year?
At this point, I guess you are patiently waiting for me to give you the secret sauce on how to keep your New Year's resolution and get through that first tough month. Unfortunately, the truth on this one is that there is no secret sauce, there is no itemised list I can give you or steps I can walk you through on how to keep your resolution for the first twenty-eight days; or even the first week it seems people may need help with. This is because keeping a resolution is all about internalised determination, willpower, and wanting to keep to that resolution badly enough. It has to be something you want to do, not something someone else had suggested or something you just fancy, it has to be something you want. As soon as it becomes a true lifestyle change you want to make for yourself, then and only then do you have a strong chance of keeping it for the first week, twenty-eight days and ultimately the rest of the year. Therefore, if you do decide to make a New Year's resolution this year I strongly suggest you pick something that you really want and make it a top priority.
