It’s that time of year…. For one reason or another, the New Year has become the dedicated time for people to resolve to be better in one way or another from the way they were in the past. Most cultures have had some form of promise-making at the start of the new year, regardless of the calendar being used. Most resolutions focus on physical and mental well-being, such as losing weight, exercising more, being more positive, enjoying life, and being more organized. In general, I am in favor of resolutions in spite of the fact that they are notorious for how quickly most people break them. Studies suggest that fewer than one in five adults are able to use a resolution to change their behavior.
What resolutions typically fail to take into account is the power of habit. People typically continue to do what they have always done in spite of their resolutions. The great American family therapist, Virginia Satir, referred to this phenomenon as “the lure of the familiar.” Back in the days when music was recorded on vinyl, grooves were cut in the record. As the turntable turned, a needle transferred vibrations to an amplifier. Because the grooves in the record stayed the same, the same music played whenever that record was on the turntable. Behavior—and not only human behavior, but also the behavior of all living things—is similar to the grooves in vinyl records. Once the grooves are set, the same behaviors repeat themselves. That’s one of the reasons habitual patterns, such as smoking, can be difficult to change unless you understand the nature of repetition.
Here’s an example from my history. For more than 20 years I drove the same route to my work at Western Michigan University every day. I came to an intersection on the edge of Western Michigan University, turned right, went a few hundred yards, turned right again, found a place in the parking lot, and went into the building—West Hall, for those of you who knew the WMU campus in the “old days.” Then the College of Business got a new building, and I had a new office in a new location. For about a month, I managed to arrive at my new location without a problem. One day, however, I was driving to work while mentally reviewing the things I had to do that day. I parked, turned off the ignition, and looked up. What I saw was my old building, West Hall. The old grooves in the vinyl of my mind were evidently embedded more deeply than the new grooves being laid down to replace them. All it took was one moment of being “lost in thought” for the old grooves to reassert themselves.
One of the differences between return of my old behavior and the return of old behaviors like smoking, excessive drinking, or gambling is that I received no “reward” for going to the wrong building. I had to go to go to the new location to receive all the rewards I associated with my work. And that is one of the tricks to make sure your resolutions for new behaviors diminish any rewards from the behaviors you are replacing, and make sure that the new behaviors provide rewards you can identify and enjoy. You set the direction for the new behavior, and then establish a reward system for engaging in the new behavior. It also helps, of course, when you can ensure that the old behavior is no longer rewarding, so that the old behavior no longer provides a sense of satisfaction. Here’s what science has to say about New Year’s Resolutions: Making Resolutions Stick.
New Year’s resolutions work best when you have just one or two. If you have a number of things you really want to change, you may need to think in terms of a New Year’s revolution. We tend to think of “revolutions” for mechanical things: record players turned at so many revolutions per minute (RPM), automobile engines increase their RPM when we step on the gas, and so on. The term also applies to sudden and often less-than-pleasant changes in governments: The American Revolution, the French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and so on. In some ways, changing a multitude of behaviors is similar to changing a system of government. Changing a number of behaviors is more difficult than changing just one, and while you need to remain focused on a number of behavioral patterns at a time, success provides more rewards.
An example calling for a revolution would be multiple needs: to stop smoking, reduce your consumption of alcohol, lose weight, and start an exercise program. In such cases, the “battle” needs to be fought on several fronts at the same time, which increases the difficulty of following through. A way to increase your chances of success is to find an overriding theme that connects the separate goals. Note that for political revolutions, the themes have been freedom or justice or, in the case of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, fraternity. Such words make good rallying cries, even when different people might define them in different ways. Many of the things that most people desire to change might be tied together by the theme of “health.” At one time or another, most of us have wanted to change a behavior because it would help us be healthier. “Wealth” is another inclusive term that can mean different things to different people. The idea is to group the things you want to change into an inclusive category so that when you think about your New Year’s Revolution, you know exactly what behaviors you are changing now.
Just as Herbert Benson, M.D., went from The Relaxation Response in 1976 to The Relaxation Revolution, in 2010 (see video), consider the ways you can benefit from recognizing the ways the changes you desire for yourself are interconnected, and begin thinking in terms of enjoying a New Year’s revolution