How to stick to New Year’s resolutions and truly change your habits

 

A month has passed; it was fast! Good time to do a time check on our new year’s resolutions.

A few days ago, I read an article about changing behaviors written by Erika Kirgios, a doctoral student. It reminded me of the book Atomic Habits from James Clear, which I LOVE!

She suggests similar ideas, but with a spin. I tried a couple and they worked well for me, so I wanted to share them with you.

1 Apply “temptation bundling”: consciously bundled a temptation with the activity you need to do, like lightening your favorite candle and drink your favorite tea only when you are working (if you aim to get your job done);

2 Create an incentive: set a penalty every time you do something you want to quit. What I do is 10 push-ups every time I use the cellphone at the table;

3 Build a plan: you can follow the WOOP framework, which stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, and Plan, for goal setting, identifying any obstacles hindering you before devising a plan to navigate around them.

4 Pig-back: stacking an activity you’d like to start right after a regular habit, like waking up or brushing your teeth;

5 Frame your resolution positively: researchers noticed that people with “positive” goals were 12% more likely to succeed than those with goals centered around avoiding something;

6 Have an oops day: slipups happen. So factor them in. Rather than trying to meditate every day, your goal could be to meditate five out of seven days per week. That’s one way to avoid the Abstinence Violation Effect, in which you say “screw it” after missing a day of routine and let it slide even more;

7 Find a partner or a mentor: that way, you can be each other’s commitment device and be more accountable, too.

8 Give yourself another “fresh start”: a “mental accounting period” could be the start of a new year, a birthday, or even a month. So, if you lost the New Year’s groover, you have another chance now as February is just beginning.

Let’s do this!

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