Mark Canada is the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at Indiana University Kokomo, and Christina Downey is an Indiana University professor of psychology.
If you’ve set a New Year’s resolution, your plan for self-improvement likely begins on January 1, when the hangover subsides and the quest for the “new you” begins.
According to research on habit change, however, only around half of New Year’s resolutions are likely to survive January, much alone last a lifetime.
As experts in positive psychology and literature, we advocate an unorthodox but more promising strategy.
This is known as the “old year’s resolution.”
It blends concepts from psychologists and Benjamin Franklin, America’s first self-improvement guru, who pioneered a habit-change approach that was decades ahead of its time.
With the “old year” approach, you may be able to avoid the inevitable obstacles associated with traditional New Year’s resolutions and make long-lasting, beneficial improvements.
Researchers have identified two possible dangers associated with New Year’s resolutions.
First, a self-fulfilling prophecy may develop if you lack the confidence to invest in a full-fledged attempt. In addition, you may discontinue the endeavor if you maintain the change but view the progress to be excessively slow or inadequate.
The previous year’s resolution is distinct. Instead of waiting until January to attempt life changes, you conduct a trial run prior to the New Year.
How does that function?
Initially, identify a desired change in your life. Do you desire to eat healthier? Move more? Increase your savings? Now, with January 1 approaching, begin living in accordance with your pledge. Monitor your progress. You may stumble occasionally, but here’s the thing: You’re simply practicing.
If you have ever rehearsed a play or participated in scrimmages, you have used this type of rehearsal to prepare for the real thing. Such experiences authorize us to fail.
Carol Dweck and her colleagues have demonstrated that when people view failure as a natural consequence of attempting something difficult, they are more inclined to persevere.
Failure can lead to surrender, though, if individuals see it as proof that they are incapable of or unworthy of achievement.
If you become convinced that you cannot attain a goal, you may develop a condition known as “learned helplessness” and forsake the activity entirely.
Many of us set ourselves up for failure unwittingly with our New Year’s resolutions. On January 1st, we immediately adopt a new lifestyle and, as expected, slip, fall, and slip again until we are unable to stand again.
The previous year’s resolution relieves strain. It allows you to fail and even to learn from failure. Since failures are occurring prior to the project’s official “start date,” you can gradually gain confidence while they become less significant.
Long before he became one of America’s greatest success stories, Benjamin Franklin devised a system that helped him overcome life’s inevitable disappointments – a method that could help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions.
Franklin, while still a young man, conceived of what he termed his “courageous and laborious ambition of attaining moral perfection.” He set out to master 13 qualities, including temperance, frugality, chastity, industry, order, and humility, with endearing confidence.
He put a little strategy to his efforts, focussing on one virtue at a time, in true Franklinian fashion. He compared this strategy to a gardener who “does not strive to eradicate all the undesirable herbs at once, which would be beyond his reach and ability, but instead works on one bed at a time.”
Franklin did not state in his book, in which he explained this effort in detail, that he related it to a new year. He did not give up when he failed once or more times.
Franklin remarked, “I was surprised to find myself so much more full of flaws than I had thought, but I had the joy of seeing them shrink.”
He logged his slip-ups in a book that displayed his development. On one page, presumably as a hypothetical example, there are sixteen references to “moderation” in a single week. In accordance with the research of B.J. Fogg, an expert on the formation of habits, we suggest that instead of noting mistakes, wins should be recorded. Fogg’s findings indicate that celebrating victories helps to motivate habit change.
Repeated failures could discourage someone to the point of abandoning the activity. However, Franklin persisted for years. This drive to improve himself was a “project” for Franklin, and projects are time-consuming.
“An improved and happier man”
Franklin later acknowledged that despite his greatest efforts, he was never perfect. His ultimate evaluation, though, is noteworthy:
“However, on the whole, although I never achieved the perfection I had so ardently sought, but fell well short of it, I was a better and happier man for having pursued it than I would have been had I not.”
Franklin found success in approaching self-improvement as a project with no hard deadline. In reality, his plan likely contributed to his phenomenal success in business, science, and politics. Importantly, he found enormous personal gratification in the endeavor: “This tiny artifice, with the favor of God,” he said, was the key to “the constant felicity of his life, up to the 79th year of his life, when this was written.”
You can achieve the same success as Benjamin Franklin if you start on your own timetable — now, during the old year – and approach self-improvement as an ongoing “project” rather than a goal with a starting date.
It may also be helpful to recall Benjamin Franklin’s note to himself on a virtue he coincidentally named “Resolution”: “Resolve to do what you should; do what you resolve without fail.”
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