Resolutions
Today I’m going to talk about resolutions and why they fail. I’m sure we have all had the experience of making a resolution to lose 10 pounds, exercise regularly, not yell at our kids, stop biting our nails, drink less, quit smoking and so on. On a recent solo trip, I watched Bridget Jones’ Diary – a remarkably durable film, honestly – and of course this is one of the recurring themes where Bridget quickly returns to her chain smoking, over drinking, excessively man-dependent ways.
Why Don’t Resolutions Work?
So why don’t resolutions work? What can we do about it? And how can we set goals for changes in behaviour which are more likely to succeed? Recall that our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions and our actions create our results. When we say we want to lose ten pounds, we think of this as an action, but it is actually a result. So we have to look at the three upstream drivers of our results.
- You have beliefs which create negative emotion in this area.
- There is a negative emotion you are resisting.
- The actions you think will create your result will not.
Beliefs
Beliefs are thoughts we have had so many times we think they are true. Beliefs are not true or false – they are just thoughts. Truth (circumstance) has to do with something that everyone in the world will agree on.
In order to identify beliefs which are holding you back from making change, I recommend doing a thought dump in the area you want to change. For example, if you want to live within your means, you will need to do an extensive thought dump around how you interact with money. Beliefs can come from your own life but they much more often come from your family of origin or the surrounding culture. It can be tricky to separate truth from fact, so don’t try at this point, just write down a stream of consciousness about the area of interest.
I am bad with money. Debt is bad. I should have bought a house ten years ago. I work hard and I deserve to have nice things. It is better to rent than to own. You only live once. There must be something wrong with me that I don’t have a new car. I don’t want to spend my prime years scrimping and saving and then be too old to enjoy myself. My partner is bad with money. I’m the only responsible one around here. I give up so much, I deserve to buy myself nice things once in a while. Financial stuff is complicated. Only an idiot would cut their own hair or manage their own finances. I’m not good with numbers.
In the above example, I think it’s easy to see that the vast majority of these thoughts are not going to create actions of the type: “Refrain from buying this thing which is not in my budget until next month when I have budgeted for it.” Usually, there will be some themes of emotions that arise from your thoughts – fear, stupidity, ignorance, self indulgent, entitled might be some. Whatever your thought dump looks like and in whatever area, try to figure out what kinds of feelings and emotions are being generated by the thoughts you’re thinking. Chances are that you are resisting feeling those emotions.
Our instincts are to berate ourself when we notice these thoughts. For example, if we are feeling deprived, we may tell ourselves to ‘suck it up’ – X group has it way worse than we do. We may berate ourselves for not being able to deny ourselves even for a few days. This quickly leads to self loathing, recrimination and self indulgence in the very action we have been trying to resist.
TL;DR
You can’t hate yourself skinny, rich or fit.
Resisting Emotions
This is probably the most often overlooked and the most powerful reason that we don’t follow through on resolutions. Humans really really don’t like feeling so called negative emotions in any kind of messy human way. So we don’t mind weeping at the grief portrayed in Steel Magnolias, but we will eat as many Doritos as necessary to avoid feeling mild boredom.
When we resist emotions, we are naturally drawn to actions which buffer the emotions we are resisting. These include busyness, over eating, over working, over drinking, over shopping, gambling, social media, video games etc. These actions have in common that they give dopamine rewards, they give diminishing rewards and they do not lead to thoughts and actions which will create our desired results.
Our child brains believe that feeling negative emotions is dangerous, out of control and will probably kill us almost instantly. So we carefully construct our lives to avoid and resist these emotions. We will often repeat affirmations and gratitudes which are almost opposite to our true feelings in an attempt to talk ourselves out of the authentic emotions we are feeling. You cannot state the opposite of what you actually feel and expect your body and child brain to believe you. This is toxic positivity. If you feel ashamed of your body, you cannot say ‘My body is beautiful.’ or ‘I am a sexy goddess.’ and expect your brain to believe you. Your body knows when you are lying to it.
I have talked previously about how to process emotions – this is a skill which takes practice. At first, just notice and name the emotion and try not to act on it. You might just say ‘I’m notice I am feeling bored/scared/ashamed.’ This helps create a separation between your self and the emotion you are feeling. You are not your emotions, anymore than you are your thoughts or actions.
When you can notice the emotion regularly, you may want to shift your experience of it slightly by adding a deliberately reassuring statement, such as ‘I’m feeling X and that’s OK.’
When you feel safe enough, I recommend that you process the emotions. This involves dropping into your body and encouraging the emotion to move through you. Don’t be in a hurry. I often say to myself: ‘You can feel as X as you need to, as intensely as you need to, for as long as you need to.’ during this process. When you have done full processing a few times, you can often just say hello to an emotion because you know so well what it feels like in your body. ‘Oh hello shame.’
TL;DR
If you are having trouble getting the results you want, look for an emotion you’re trying not to feel and work on noticing it, acknowledging it and processing it.
Incorrect Actions
If you are not getting the results you want, you may be taking actions which do not actually lead to the result you desire.
This is an interesting area which is often driven by cultural beliefs. For example, one popular belief is that losing weight involves exercising. The metabolic truth is that exercise burns only a modest amount of calories and the caloric effort involved to refrain from eating something is much less than the caloric effort to burn it off.
Another example would be that investing in the stock market is risky and that retirement savings should be in low risk bonds and mutual funds. Investors following this advice will always do much more poorly than the market and will lose out on decades of compounded gains.
Another fruitful area of incorrect beliefs is that eating in a certain special way, or certain special foods is needed for weight loss. While there is some truth to the idea that e.g. low carb diets can be helpful for people who have borderline diabetes, or that a Mediterranean diet is helpful to reduce heart disease risk, there is no evidence for super foods, food combining or vegan/vegetarian diets as leading to increased weight loss or improved health.
Engaging in actions which don’t lead to the desired results is not a problem as long as we are in a flexible and curious mindset when we assess our results.
For example, say you decide to exercise 30 minutes a day as your action in order to create the result of ten pounds of weight loss. You work on your underlying beliefs and feelings and decide that you will exercise in your own home, on the elliptical, which you enjoy, and you will watch a favourite TV show while you do it. You identify some insecurities about your appearance and physical fitness, and work to think more neutral thoughts. You develop SMART goals and start with five minutes daily, work you way up to 30 minutes over a few weeks and check your weight after you exercise 30 minutes a day for 30 days in a row.
Your weight is up about 3 pounds (no doubt due to increased muscle mass and fluid fluctuations). Many people, when faced with this, decide to double down on the action, increasing exercise to 60 minutes a day, or increasing the intensity of the action. But if you can be curious about this result, it might be that the action of exercising 30 minutes a day is not one which will lead to weight loss FOR YOU. Someone else may find that 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity is just the trick.
If the result you wanted was to lower your resting heart rate, improve your VO2 max, improve your endurance and increase your leg strength, then 30 minutes of elliptical would probably have done the trick. When you start managing your mind, you can probably talk yourself into taking any action you want, but usually we want the RESULT, so if your actions are not creating your results, you are either mistaken about the relationship between action and result or you are taking other actions which counteract the more deliberate actions.
TL;DR
If you are not getting the results you want, reassess the actions you are taking and consider new actions.
Resolutions Are Not Enough
In order to achieve the results you want, you need to take actions that actually lead directly to those results. You have to be thinking thoughts and generating emotions which consistently lead to those actions. And you have to work on the thoughts, feelings and actions that generate the opposite of the results you want. Getting clear about what you are thinking and feeling and getting curious when you don’t achieve the results you want so you can try out new actions will be invaluable as you work towards your desired results.