Keeping Resolutions

This is a fantastic article. Most of this has been true for me.


Why we can't stick to our resolutions

By CHRIS BYNUM

The New Orleans Times-Picayune

First the bad news: While two-thirds of Americans make New Year's resolutions, nine in 10 confess they break them before January is over. More than half of those resolutions are health-related (lose weight, stop smoking, reduce stress).

Now the good news. There's a reason you break your resolutions, and there is a way to keep them.

You break them because the emotional side of your brain battles it out with the thinking side of your brain. You can keep your resolutions if you commit to do something both sides of your brain can agree on, says executive coach M.J. Ryan, author of the book "This Year I Will ... How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True."

"We resolve with our thinking brain. We say we will jog first thing every morning to lose 20 pounds. But what happens when you wake up, and it's too dark and too cold?" says Ryan. We have an emotional brain that prefers to sleep in, she says.

The emotional brain, she says, sees pain or pleasure, safety or danger. So when we tell ourselves we are going to stop eating sugar with our thinking brain, our emotional brain sees chocolate and thinks pleasure.

So here's her advice for making the two brains work together for successful resolutions:

• Make the resolution something you really want. Have an emotional connection to your resolution.

• Keep the emotional reason behind the resolution alive. Ryan had a client who wanted to stop smoking. She asked him for the emotional reason he wanted to stop. The client thought it was because his father had died of lung cancer at 55. That was the health reason. The emotional reason was that the client wanted to live long enough to retire to a beach in Hawaii. Ryan suggested that the client keep a picture of a beach in clear view for the times he felt like smoking.

So while you may say you are resolving to exercise, are you really resolving to fit into that little black dress?

"Take the little black dress out of the closet and put it in the bathroom, and say every day, 'I'm going to wear you.' When those four o'clock cravings at the office hit, you will visualize that little black dress," says Ryan.

• Keep your resolutions specific. Saying you want to be fit, she says, is not a resolution. "Say I'm going to exercise 30 minutes five times a week. That's something you can figure out if you are accomplishing it or not."

• Make your resolution time-bound. "Think in short time periods," says Ryan. "On Monday say you will exercise for 30 minutes every day. On Sunday, you can say it again. If you say you are going to exercise for the rest of the year, you will make your emotional brain miserable."

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• Don't turn goof-ups into give-ups. Resolutions are not perfection, says Ryan. Old habits are deeply grooved into our brains. Making new habits is about making a new pathway.

"Under stress, we default to the old pathway because the groove is deeper. We are simply working to make new grooves as we make new habits," says Ryan.

• Be kind to yourself when you mess up. "Don't say, 'Forget it!' You blew it only for that moment. Be kind to yourself and start again," says Ryan. The best insurance for keeping resolutions, says Ryan, is tracking yourself. Use a chart, or report to a buddy.

"Tracking creates awareness," says Ryan, who advises many of her clients to keep a chart to record progress. Most who are successful keep workout diaries, food diaries or personal journals.