Time to Ignore the New Year's Hype!
Why is January 1st the magical date that everything changes and we magically start doing all the things we want to do? This also extends to starting anything on the first of any month, or Mondays, for that matter. Why do we have to wait for these specific days to change, and are these the best days to start?
For the last month or so, I’ve been getting newsletters and social media posts prompting me to buy my new planner for the new year, to name my “word of the year”, and to set my resolutions, intentions, or feelings for the coming year. Of course, this also comes with prompts to buy all the things to help me finally achieve all my goals…
Here’s the thing, I’m not going there this year or ever again! The fact is, 91% of New Year's resolutions fail by the end of the year, and 80% fail by February!
Forget setting yourself up for failure! It’s discouraging and isn’t helpful overall. It also leads to the false belief that you can’t change and typically leads to us doubling down on the thing we want to change.
While we’re wired not to change, it doesn’t mean we can’t. Success means understanding your brain and knowing how to set yourself up for success. While there are several things that stand in the way of true change, some of these are within our control and some aren’t. This doesn’t mean we can’t get around the things out of our control!
The first thing to remember is that your mind, and especially your subconscious want to keep you safe and alive. Everything you do on a daily basis has kept you alive or is a coping mechanism for a reason. This doesn’t mean that changing things that aren’t serving you isn’t possible, but knowing how your brain is wired can help.
Our brains are wired to run on habit, to focus on the negative and to keep us alive in the moment regardless of how that choice affects our future health.
Habits
We’re wired to run on habit, however, most of that is subconscious for a reason. 90-95% of our thoughts and actions are driven by the subconscious to free up mental space for our conscious thoughts. If we had to think about everything we do in a day, within a very short period of time, we’d be mentally exhausted, and wouldn’t get much done.
Changing habits can be hard (especially if they’re habits we’ve had for a long time), but it’s not impossible. The key is to start small.
The smaller you start, the less resistance there is to change. The larger the change, the higher the resistance.
Tips to make new habits stick:
Habit stacking: adding a new habit to an existing habit can help you remember the new habit
Keep it small: Doing the smallest thing in a larger habit and building on that.
Keep it consistent: Some habits are fast and others are slow to be established. Keeping something up for 90 days will get you most (if not all) of the way to getting a habit to stick.
Find the joy: Finding pleasure in the new habit or the results of a new habit will help you to make the new habit an ingrained habit.
Negative Bias and the Reticular Activating System
We’re wired to focus on the negative. Why? Millions of years ago, it meant the difference between staying alive or dying. It meant being able to avoid danger (getting away from the tiger or bear). These days we don’t live with that constant threat of danger, but our mind and our nervous system haven’t caught up yet.
Our minds process millions of bits of information every second of every day. Most of this is done in our subconscious mind because our conscious mind can’t handle that much information. Our subconscious mind remembers every minute of every day we’ve been alive and uses that information to continue to keep us alive.
The Reticular Activating System or RAS is the filter between the conscious and subconscious mind.
The RAS is the reason why you start seeing a thing your conscious mind has been focusing on more. If you’re planning on buying a white car, you’ll start to see white cars everywhere. It doesn’t mean that there are suddenly more white cars, it means that your RAS is allowing that information to filter through to your conscious mind because it now perceives it as important.
In an effort to help keep us alive, the RAS focuses primarily on the negative. This isn’t always the case and it’s possible for the RAS to focus on the positive, but it does take extra work. By actively focusing on the things that are going right (glimmers, gratitude practices, etc.), we can teach our RAS that the positive is important too.
Stress and our Sympathetic Nervous System
Our subconscious is wired to keep us alive in the moment regardless of what will happen tomorrow. Stress triggers our sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to flood our body with hormones and neurotransmitters like adrenaline and cortisol so we can get away from the thing that’s causing our stress response to be triggered. It used to be that this only happened in a life threatening situation, but now it can be triggered by email or social media or something else that’s not life threatening.
Think of your sympathetic nervous system like the gas pedal in your car and your parasympathetic nervous system (rest, digest and heal) like the brake pedal. The more your sympathetic nervous system is triggered (the more you push the gas pedal), the more fuel you use. This means that your body is using a lot of glucose (our primary fuel source) in times of stress and this means that it’s going to crave fast sources of additional fuel (sugar, chips, fries, bread, pasta…) to make sure that it has enough to keep running from all the bears. Lack of sleep can also be a stressor that causes additional cravings for high calorie foods and caffeine.
Cramming New Years resolutions or other changes into an already full schedule can be incredibly stressful and is a large part of why all diets and resolutions about weight loss fail.
Now What?
Now that you know all of this, what do you do with it? Make small sustainable changes that help you live the life you want! While this may sound overly simple, it works.
Small changes: these are changes that can easily be woven into your day with little to no effort. This is where habit stacking can be helpful too.
Create boundaries: using boundaries to create space for the things that are important to you and scheduling them. By scheduling time each week, it creates space for these small changes.
Prioritize rest: rest is an important part of achieving your goals! Rest isn’t just sleep; there are seven different types of rest - physical (passive and active), mental, sensory, creative, emotional, social and spiritual. Each of these are needed to allow us the space and energy to achieve our goals. (Listen to Saundra Dalton-Smith’s TEDx Talk and take the rest quiz.)
Pick your time to start: choose when you want to start a new habit. Don’t let waiting for a particular day or time of the year stop you from making the change you want to make in a season that makes it easiest for you to stick with it. Choosing a time when your motivation is high can be useful as long as your desire to actually make the change is an internal desire rather than something someone else told you you should want or do.
Use a habit tracker: writing down your goals, broken down into steps, can help you to remember what you want to be doing - especially if you have multiple things you’re working on. Checking them off on a daily basis can help you to see if there’s a particular day you’re skipping or if you’re leaving everything to the end of the day or something else that may be getting in the way. Also, checking things off is a great way to boost dopamine and motivation.
Find your people: accountability is a huge help when it comes to making a change. Find like-minded people that will cheer you on and support you when you need it.
Celebrate the wins: celebrating every success, no matter how small, can help to boost your desire to stick with changes when you want to quit.
Brainstorm solutions: similar to celebrating successes, brainstorming solutions to possible or actual struggles can help you find a way to make the changes you want to make in a way that works for you. This is also where finding your people can help - they may have ideas you haven’t thought of.
1% better: on the days that are hard and everything is going off the rails, what’s one small thing you can do for yourself that helps you become 1% better? Perhaps that’s having some water, taking 3-5 deep breaths, getting outside for 5 minutes or something else.
Help your future self out: do things today that your future self will thank you for tomorrow. Who your future self is depends entirely on what you choose in this moment and the moments to come. Your future self is as little as 1 deep breath away. You can also think of your future self as years or decades away. This is where small positive habits add up.
Regardless of where you’re at, what your goals are, how full your life is, you can create the life you want to live by making space for yourself and the things that matter to you. Choose one small thing and start making a change that your future self will thank you for.
Andrea
PS - as always, there are lots of additional resources that can help support you in doing the things you want to do!
Articles about Habits + How to Change them:
How Habits Affect Your Life + How to Make Them Work for You
How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick Part 1
How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick Part 2
How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick Part 3
How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick Part 4
Articles to Support a Positive Mindset:
Glimmers: Illuminating the Path to Positive Mental Health
Articles about Boundaries:
Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First
Articles on Improving Sleep:
Why Sleep Matters and How to Sleep Better
How to Create a Great Sleep Routine
How to Create Daytime Habits to Support Sleep
Your Snooze Button and Why it’s Messing with You!
Supporting Rest in the Current Season:
