Humans have been busy making New Year’s resolutions for at least 4,000 years. No, it is not a modern phenomenon! “The very first New Year’s resolutions dates happened over 4,000 years ago. The first recorded people to celebrate a new year were the ancient Babylonians. Their new year celebration was a 12-day festival called Akitu, which began at the start of the spring planting season in March”. The purpose of this festival was for Babylonians to pledge their allegiance to their king and promise to pay back all their debts and return borrowed things. The Romans moved their New Year calendar to January 1st in the year 486 B.C. to honor the Roman god Janus. Sacrifices would be made to Janus on this day, and resolutions were made by the Romans to maintain good behavior. Fast forward to the 18th century when “Christians would hold mass on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. Worshippers could reflect on the past year and make resolutions to do better in the year ahead. www.insightvacations.com. Since then, more and more cultures around the world have adopted the tradition.
In our Cuban culture, we follow Spain’s tradition of eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. It’s a race! If you can manage to down all 12 grapes before the bell stops chiming 12 times, which is pretty darn hard, you can look forward to prosperity and abundance in the new year. In addition to eating the 12 grapes, another “must do” in Cuban culture is to forcefully throw a bucket of water out the front door in an “out with the bad, in with the good” ceremony. In Latin America and Mediterranean countries, New Year traditions are more based on “wishes” rather than resolutions. You wish for good things to come by engaging in different rituals, which can vary from jumping waves at the beach in Brazil to wearing red underwear in Italy to ancestor worship in China. These rituals tend not to feel as burdensome or serious as resolutions.
In contrast, most Americans take New Year resolutions more seriously, usually focused on eating healthier, losing weight, or some other type of personal improvement goal. These resolutions are pretty goal-oriented. However, of the 41% of Americans who make resolutions, only 9% follow through with them. It begs the question of whether this practice is a healthy one since the rate of success could be higher. The way that News Year’s resolutions are framed in our society, they end up being goals and most motivation psychologists agree that this is why they fail. We humans are just not that good at breaking old habits and adopting new ones. “Goals come from the more rational, long-term-oriented part of your brain. Say you want to lose a few pounds, be nicer to people, or cut down on social media. You are not struggling to see why you want to change. The problem is the more impulsive, short-term-oriented part of your brain, the one that sustains your habits and takes over most of your day-to-day actions. Your brain is very good at automatizing behavior and freeing resources for other things. But, when those automatic behaviors conflict with your long-term goals, you struggle” www.psychologytoday.com.
Are we doomed to fail at our New Year’s resolutions forever? Should we just give up on the whole idea? Not necessarily, say motivation psychologists. What we can do is frame things a bit differently. One option might be to adopt an approach that has worked very well in the field of business management, which is to adopt SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Let’s take the idea of weight loss as a resolution. Instead of saying, “I want to lose weight,” you might want to break it down into small pieces and also reflect on why this resolution is important. When it comes to being specific, “I want to lose 10 lbs by June 1st” is not enough -that’s just the “what”. How do you expect to achieve this? For example, you may want to begin intermittent fasting on 5 out 7 days/week, or you could begin to track calories or carbs on an app to ensure that you stay within set ranges. You might want to adopt a Mediterranean or paleo diet and subscribe to a food delivery service tailored to those needs if you are too busy for meal prep at home. Once you answer the what and the how measuring progress is critical for success. You could measure progress by weighing yourself every two weeks (and setting an alert on your calendar as a reminder). And if you fall short of your expected progress, what are the options besides giving up?
There’s great value to this executive, left-brain type of approach to resolutions. However, we also must engage our impulses and habits, which are not really great at understanding executive, left brain language. “The impulsive part of your brain does not speak in statements, though; it speaks in conditionals” www.psychologytoday.com. Motivation psychologists suggest that we speak to our impulsive brain in if-then statements. If our resolution is to lose weight, then we might want to commit to specific actions that address triggers. For example, if we always order fries with our burgers, we can say, “If I order a burger, I will order a salad.” It helps to write these if-then conditions down daily until our behaviors begin to change and new, healthier habits kick in. If your resolution is to cut down on social media/phone use, then perhaps you simply leave the phone in another room before you sit down for a meal -if I sit down to eat, I will leave my phone in the bedroom.
This all sounds like a lot of work, and it is. My take on it is to choose only the worthwhile battles when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. That could include losing weight if there is an active health issue that needs to be addressed. If your health is great and you look good, but you’re obsessed about those last five pounds, then maybe it’s not worth taking on another goal. And most importantly, give yourself grace! We have the best intentions, and then life just happens. I learned that the hard way with my last New Year’s resolution about riding my horses more often -I was determined to ride at least four times a week. But despite my best efforts, I was struggling to get in two rides a week. I began to ask myself if I was losing motivation or getting lazy. I beat myself up quite frequently about it. It turns out I was finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder this Fall, and the reasons for my fatigue, sense of overwhelm, and heat and exercise intolerance made sense at last. I was not lazy or failing to meet my goals; I was simply too sick! Let’s do our collective best in 2025 to set good intentions for living the best life possible and celebrating all the little things we get done while dealing with complex and challenging times in our world. 2025 is the Year of Grace!
by Dulce Gracia-Morman, ph.D.
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