New Years Resolutions-Do they work?

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Model Katie Lee holds a kettle bell pondering her New years Resolution.

Model Katie Lee holds a kettle bell   and ponders her New Year’s resolutions. Health and Fitness Specialist Connie Aronson recommends that those who wish to keep their resolutions ” wait 10 minutes” or ” write themselves a letter.” Courtesy photo of Connie Aronson.

Every year, 45% of Americans make a New Year’s Resolution, an earnest promise to be better or try harder. Call them the agents of change, as theses people are ten times more likely to attain their goals.
Last year, according to a University of Scranton study, losing weight, getting organized, spending less and saving more were the top three resolutions. Maybe the bravery of setting new goals is just too overwhelming for the rest of us. After all, change is hard.

The good news is that you don’t need a new diet or self-help book, or just plain will power. Science shows that our bodies and brains need to get on board together. We need to understand why we aren’t already doing the particular things we need to do for change to occur.

We all struggle with temptation, addictions, distractions, excuses, and procrastination. Overeating chocolate mint brittle all week long doesn’t mean you are a bad person. Our struggles are universal experiences and part of the human condition. “Our human nature,” writes Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., in The Willpower Instinct, “includes both the self that wants instant gratification and the self with a higher purpose.”

Dr. McGonigal describes our struggles with temptation and procrastination from research published in 2007 involving some chimpanzees and humans. The humans were students from Harvard and the chimps from the prestigious Wolfgang Koehler Primate Research Center in Leipzig. The challenge was to delay the gratification of an immediate snack for more food. The temptation: Grapes for the chimps, and raisins, popcorn, M&M’s and Goldfish crackers for the humans.

First, they could all choose between 2 or 6 treats, which was easy, as both humans and chimps agreed that six was better than two. Then each competitor was given the choice to eat two treats immediately, or wait two minutes for six. When they had to wait for the treat, the patient chimps won out: an impressive 72% of the time, yet the students waited only 19% of the time.

Blame it on how humans rationalize. We have all sorts of mental tricks thanks to our prefrontal cortex’s ability to rationalize bad decisions and promise we’ll be better tomorrow.

“We’re rational until we aren’t,” Dr. McGonigal writes. The same goes for when the short-term reward is staring at us in the face: we want it now. Immediate gratification.

Try either of these following tips for success in reaching your goals in 2014:

Wait ten minutes

The brain’s reward system doesn’t care about the future.

Staring at M&M’s triggers the older, more primitive reward system of dopamine driven desire, when food for survival was the reward system’s original target. But temptation has a narrow window of opportunity.

As a waitress, management taught us that dessert sales were lost if you didn’t get to the table as soon as dinner plates were removed. When temptation is visible, the warm cobbler going to the next table for example, the prefrontal cortex is really overwhelmed. If you have to wait for your waiter, or distance yourself between you and the temptation, the balance of power goes back to the brain’s system of control.

The same is true for your own trigger: put them out of sight.

Write yourself a letter

“Imagine looking back at 2014, from a place of having achieved your most important goal for the year,” Dr. McGonigal writes in “Five Things You Can Do Instead of New Year’s Resolutions.” “In your letter, thank your present self for all you did to achieve your goals—and be specific. Or give yourself some compassionate advice from your wiser, 2015 self. Research shows that connecting to your future self in this way can help you make a difficult change and succeed at your goals.”

Willpower-know what you really want

Willpower is an instinct everyone has, yet it consists of much more than simply saying “I will’, or “I won’t”. As we move into the third week of the New Year, some of the lofty goals and self-control have vaporized. Don’t despair though;   self-control is only one part of willpower. The ability to remember what you REALLY want, (get out of debt, fit into your clothes, more sleep) is the ability to say “yes” to that particular goal. This is what Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., psychology  lecturer  at Stanford University, whose course, The Science of Willpower, teaches and  which her new book is based on. “To exert self-control, you need to find your motivation when it matters. This is the “I want” power, she writes.

Now Strategies

A student in Dr. McGonigal’s class, a producer, was an e-mail addict. Her behavior disrupted not only her work, but annoyed her boyfriend. The student described her email impulses almost as an itch-she just had to check her email. She was always tense. Her assignment was to catch herself before she reached for her phone. With time, she realized that her impulses had nothing to do with seeking information and was doing nothing to relieve her tension. As she began to notice how she gave in to her impulses, it gave her new control over her behavior. Catch yourself  falling  for your impulses earlier  in the process, and  notice which thoughts or situations might make it more likely that you will give in to your impulses, are strategies that McGonigal  teaches.

Stressed and Sleepless: The Enemies of Willpower

Willpower is essentially a mental muscle, but the body also needs to get onboard. The best intentions in the world can be sabotaged if you are sleep-depraved, stressed, sedentary, have a poor diet, or a host of other factors that sap your energy. Stress is the worst enemy of willpower, McGonigal writes. The  American Psychological Association shows  that 75% of Americans have high levels of stress and 76% of Americans want to improve the quality and quantity of the sleep they get. New evidence shows that poor sleep and stress contribute to poor self-control and focus. How can you harness positive willpower if you are exhausted? Inadequate sleep also contributes to weight gain, high blood pressure, depression, and lowered immunity. Globally, sleep deprivation affects the quality of life of 45% of the world’s population, according to the World Association of Sleep Medicine.

A Willpower Workout

( from The Willpower Instinct. How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of it -by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.)

  • Strengthen “I won’t” Power; Commit to not swearing (or refraining from any habit of speech)
  • Strengthen ‘I will” Power: Commit to doing something everyday that you don’t already do just for the practice of building a habit and not making excuses. It could be meditating for five minutes, or finding one thing in your house that needs to be thrown out or recycled.
  • Strengthen Self-Monitoring: Formally keep track of something you don’t usually pay close   attention to. This could be your spending, what you eat, or how much time you spend online or watching TV. You don’t need fancy technology-just a pen and paper.

Above all, believe in yourself and keep your dreams alive in 2012!