The new year. It offers a fresh date placed on a page. It fixates us on time, space, and the new year ahead. While nothing really changes, with days rolling into the next, the narrative created and kept by our collective wager as societies constructed around time means the new year is everything and more.
How then do we turn celebration into tangible personal change? Jude Yawson weighs in.
The clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve 1963 in Piccadilly Circus in London. (Photo: Express/Hulton Archive/
It is a time for celebration or prayer into the night, a cultural reset of the pattern of life, a moment to reflect, find a motif, and plot attainable goals for the next. Those goals and changes we call New Year’s Resolutions, and they have been a part of humanity for over thousands of years. 4,000 to be exact.
Given the imposition of a global pandemic, and the craze for betterment, wellness, and growth through a contentious time, how can we position ourselves to make the most of the new year? Must our goals focus on making the most of the same 24 hours that we apparently have? Should we be expecting to be more productive than last year? Or simply, is there any point at all? Considering it all, here’s how I believe we should navigate our new year goals.
A brief history of New Year’s
The ancient Babylonians began the tradition through Akitu each March, a 12-day new year religious festival, in which they crowned or reaffirmed loyalty to a King, made promises and pandered to the gods.
In Ancient Rome, Julius Caesar altered the calendar to 12 months based on the solar year, starting in January, named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, and endings.
The Roman god Janus
Janus looked back on the previous year on behalf of the Roman people to gauge insight for the future. Sacrifices were offered, accompanied by promises of better behaviour, a tradition continued by early Christians.
A much later Christian and founder of Methodism, John Wesley, created the Covenant Renewal Service a more reflective and low-key affair well-behaved Christians have used to celebrate New Years Eve (as opposed to partying into the night). My parents attend night vigils each year whilst I opt for the more secular, and less sober, celebration. We see throughout history that religiosity, the concept of starting anew, the endeavour for becoming greater and setting rights wrong, have been an ever-present theme of humanity’s new year.
New Year reckoning
Personally, I spend New Year’s Eve submerged in alcohol and surrounded by friends, proudly chanting and glad to have survived another 12 months. To create an actual list of New Year’s resolutions isn’t hard, and I normally use a prompt to identify the things I need to do work on the most. We all know the big three: improving health and fitness; boosting career and financial ambitions; and being more productive with time. Some drop off the grid for a few months, some kick booze, drugs, or sugar (advisedly no more than one or two of these all at once, you don’t want to spiral into uncontrollable misery).Â
Committing to these goals is something many of us start and fail at different stages. According to YouGov’s research, one in seven people have made New Year’s resolutions for 2022, compared to one in nine for 2021. A third of people claim to have kept their 2021 resolutions, while 19 per cent admit they didn’t keep any of them. For most of us, there is so much we want to change.
You might not entirely fulfil that ideal vision you had for yourself, but we still try. Nevertheless, during this period of the pandemic, our lifestyles adjusted to lockdowns and postponed or cancelled events. There’s been no way to plan and ensure that something sticks. Manoeuvring life around Covid, we’re probably living in the worst times to plan for the immediate future, so how should we go about it?
The science of resolutions and ways to do them
Researchers have detected that humans use ‘temporal landmarks’ to compare their past self to the new, the episodic points in our social timetables: a new month, a new week, a birthday and of course, the new year.
New Year, New Me?
Perhaps not…
According to behaviour psychologist Susan Weinschenk, the reason why New Year resolutions fail so much is because we don’t follow them with the science of behavioural change. She states it’s not actually hard to make changes: the scientific method we use to implement them is the same – no matter it’s adapting a habit you already have or creating a new one.
Weinschenk asks us to realise the fact we have hundreds of habits already. The way you wake up is a habit, the way you stretch is a habit, and even the expressions you make are habitual and fine tuned. Weinschenk offers three ideas for implementing the changes we want to see:
- You must pick a small action: New Year’s resolutions fail because the action wanted is too large and hasn’t been made actionable. Pick something small, something ‘atomic’, that will build a habit, that you gradually make bigger. ‘I want to procrastinate less’ is not a small action, whereas, ‘Read a book when procrastinating’ might be more appropriate. For instance, if I truly have no reason to be on it, I turn my phone off and read a book on my commutes.
- Attach your new action to a previous habit: a lot of people want to exercise more and save money, but see exercise as just ‘gym’, and spend out of convenience. Why not make a small action of, ‘Walk more instead of getting an Uber, to save money and exercise while doing it’ or taking a bus instead of three trains to save an extra 20 minutes and £2.50 – two birds, one immaterial stone.
- You should make the first action easy to build the habit: sometimes just starting is enough. You start something, and the habit becomes a reality, you gain experience, and you’ve evidently grown a little. Keep going in order to reach your goal.
Similarly, Per Carlbring of Stockholm University suggests instead of stopping things, we should start alternate things. He used the example of wanting to get rid of unhealthy foods. Instead of saying you’ll no longer have chocolate, swap chocolate for a carrot stick.
Speaking it into existence
In research conducted by Alex M Tullet and Michael Inzlicht from the University of Toronto, they found that listening to your inner voice and speaking to yourself is extremely helpful for self control. Their research found that those who didn’t speak to themselves were less able to control their behaviour. Self-talk reminds you of your why, your purpose, behind embarking on a mission to change in the first place.
I, like many others, reached a stage where setting New Year’s resolutions without small actions, like speaking to myself, is quite pointless since I actively work to change everyday. Instead of being focused primarily on those large goals, I wanted to heed the process to getting the best out of my goals. I questioned my bad writing and career habits, things impeding my health and financial stability. I considered my relationships, dating, friendships, family, and how I want to do better by them.Â
After expending all of my worries, I had a heap of goals to work towards. When also reflecting on the past year, instead of saying I failed to do anything I recognised the growth that came with it. I failed at quitting smoking last year, but spent extended periods not doing so. I learned and added abstinence to my experiences, as well as optimising my health, running 5Ks (despite not being sure I can do a few now).
But still, being held accountable and staying constantly motivated is hard – which leads me to the last point from the University of Georgia. In a study, their researchers found that self-control and a lack of it is contagious. As a result, we should surround ourselves with likeminded people who are encouraging of similar goals. Whether it is working together, or having a support network for accountability.
I have started a goal-achieving WhatsApp group with my friends. We motivate each other on a daily basis to achieve, hold ourselves accountable with a shoddy but worthwhile group description that highlights our main priorities for the week, with feedback and encouragement everyday in the form of advice and conversation, and group reflection at the end of it. I can already tell my focus is aligned with theirs. So here’s to New Years, and bettering ourselves in the best ways we can.Â
