Happy 2013! With the New Year upon us, many of us choose to make resolutions of one form or another. According to Reuters, 87% of Americans will make resolutions for 2013. Often, resolutions focus on improving some aspect of our health, our relationships, or our finances. Some examples: "This year, I am finally going to lose weight;" "I resolve to be more patient with my children;" "I will stop spending so much."
Despite our good intentions, the vast majority of us will not meet our resolutions. According to some research, fewer than 1 in 10 of us will succeed over time.
Why are we so bad at keeping our resolutions? After all, we really want to lose weight, be less stressed, or whatever else we have promised ourselves. In a nutshell, it's because we don't have a real plan. Many of us fail to define what we really want to accomplish in clear, measurable terms. On top of this, most of us don't know how we will get there. We haven't thought about how we will deal with challenges or barriers to meeting our goals, or on the other hand, how we can reorganize things in our lives to make it easier to keep our resolutions.
Fear not: help is available. One of the best sources for clear, concise guidance is a book written by my colleagues, Sheri Pruitt and Josh Klapow. Living SMART: Five Essential Skills to Change Your Health Habits Forever is focused on health behavior like losing weight, or stopping smoking. But its core recommendations can be applied to any type of resolution that involves changing what you do on a daily basis.
Living SMART uses the acronym S-M-A-R-T to describe the skills needed for success. I have taken the liberty of summarizing each of the skills below.
Setting a goal involves translating a general health goal to a target behavior. For example, “I need to relax” could be translated into “I will practice relaxation exercises for 10 minutes, three times per day, and five days per week.” One key aspect of goal setting, according to this approach, is to start with a target that is small and achievable, and then build slowly on success.
Monitoring progress is perhaps the most overlooked component of success. Self-monitoring, using a simple chart, can be used to track virtually anything you do, including exercising, eating, spending money, etc. Research has shown that self-monitoring has an impact, in and of itself, on the target action. Watching progress visually on a chart becomes a type of reward in itself.
Arranging the environment for success means modifying the home or work environment to encourage new habits that you want to cultivate, and/or to discourage old habits that you want to decrease or eliminate altogether. For example, if you want to stop drinking sodas, remove these drinks from the home refrigerator and storage pantries. Or alternatively, if you want to walk more frequently, place walking shoes at the front door as a reminder. The possibilities for arranging the environment are almost endless and require simply thinking about ways in which your desired actions can be prompted while undesired actions can be made more difficult.
Recruiting a support team involves seeking the positive influence of family, friends, and others to help meet your goals. Identify buddies or peers, meaning people who who want to achieve similar goals, to provide camaraderie along the way. Supporters, meaning people who are not necessarily making changes themselves but who agree to support your efforts, also can be helpful.
Treating oneself involves setting rewards for meeting your desired goals. Rewards should be decided in advance, and should occur frequently at the beginning. They don’t need to be large or expensive - bubble baths or watching a favorite show are examples of small treats that can be used. Over time, feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction often become rewarding in themselves.
This is a quick summary only. Sheri and Josh's book goes into much greater detail about each of these skills and how to apply them. I encourage you to read it in order to learn more about these concepts.
The research is clear: if you want to keep your resolution, you need a real plan. Your plan must define your target behavior in clear terms, include how you will change your surroundings to encourage your resolution, involve the support of others, allow you to self-monitor your progress, and reward your actions along the way.
