The New Years Resolution. If ever there was a tradition that led to a greater sense of inadequacy, I am not certain. Some make them willingly, many begrudgingly, sensing obligation to eat more healthily, detox after festive indulgences, finally begin that exercise regime we have been promising ourselves for the last decade, and some of us have given up altogether, or proclaim, with false satisfaction, a success in commitment to not making resolutions.
Why do we make resolutions anyway? What are the reasons that so many of us “fail” in our resolutions? Are we really making the correct resolutions and what might that have to do with our ability to make them stick?
Why we make them can be linked to the symbolic mid winter celebrations of death and rebirth. The willingness to make a resolution is the essence of letting go of (letting die) a part of us which we feel does not serve us well and bringing into life a new part which we want to see grow. Our lives are the result of the activities and actions we practice and therefore dedication to the practice of new activities and actions will result in a different outcome. If we are not prepared to resolve to make any changes to our behaviours, we cannot expect the outcome to be miraculously better.
Why do we find sticking to our resolutions for a better self to be so difficult to stick to? Surely if we know something is good for us it should be sufficient motivation unto itself to see us through? Our lived experience proves to us this is not the case.
Letting go of a practiced part of our lives is difficult and even painful and so we are reluctant to do it unless our perception of the effort in the task vs the expected payoff is weighted in favour of change. We might want to run a marathon but if we weight the discomfort of the training more than the sense of achievement should we ultimately succeed, then we are unlikely to push ourselves into our running shoes. Gambling exploits this tendency of our psychology by requiring a small payout for the potential of far greater return, which, coupled with the hormone rush associated with with anticipation of reward (dopamine) can create a compelling addiction.
Humans have an unprecedented ability to sacrifice our present for our future (thank you prefrontal cortex!) but this is something that some find easier than others. Many of us struggle greatly in giving up an immediate opportunity for gratification as opposed to investing in a predicted better future. Prediction is part of the problem and the proverb that, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, is a reflection of this, that we are wired to put more value in what is in front of us now than to the possibility of an uncertain future. As with all our behaviours we can improve this with conditioning, making small, successful sacrifices first, then as our neural processes reform around this new successful pattern, we are able to make increasingly greater sacrifices with more confidence in the long term likelihood that it will pay off.
The other aspect of change worth being mindful to, is what the current behaviour we are looking to sacrifice means to us. Returning to marathon example above, in order to successfully complete this task, we will need to sacrifice time and effort to the goal which will be physically demanding, uncomfortable, and is likely to result in some manner of injury during the training process. The time we sacrifice will come at the cost of some other activity in our lives and we might hope this would be time sat in front of the television which we deem to be wasted time. But it is not necessarily wasted time, for it is meeting a need for us in some manner otherwise we wouldn’t do it. So why are we watching television for 4 hours a night? It might be a desire to learn or be entertained. It might be an effective way of stopping some of the anxious noise in our minds. It might be being present and connected with our family. It might be something else of course, the need met is individual to us, but the point is that if we are not convinced that the training for the marathon will meet the same needs that watching television will, and we do not have a ready and effective substitute for the need, then we are likely to fail in our ambition.
Is it possible that some resolutions might be more worthwhile for us and deliver us more meaningful improvements in our lives? And if we recognised a deeper significance to a proposed change then it is more likely we might find the strength to stick the change.
I am going to take an audacious leap and suggest something which we might all work on which I have found to make a significant difference to our lives, the lives of those we care about, as well as the lives of those we bump into during our day to day existence. The resolution to improve our relationships.
This is a multi pronged opportunity for us all, to improve the relationship we have with ourselves, improve the relationship we have with others, and improve the relationship we have with the world. Our felt experience is essentially relational, and how we feel about the relationship with ourselves, with others and with the wider world around us will define the quality of our mental landscape. If we have a bad relationship in any of these three areas, we leave ourselves prone to psychological vulnerability and suffering. We would be ambitious to tackle all of these at once, so focusing on our relationship with ourselves and one other relationship in our lives which we would like to be better is a more realistic, but still challenging, place to start. Tackling this might require us to work on multiple parts of ourselves which will translate to tangible improvements in a broad range of aspects of our lives. We will need to cultivate the courage to approach these changes, we will need to learn about ourselves and learn to articulate what we hope for from our relationships. We need to remind ourselves that not everyone thinks the same way that we do and that we can live together with a broad (but not infinite) range of beliefs about what is best in the world. We will need to approach our relationships from the perspective of gratitude and charity, appreciation of the smallest of blessings that we have and willingness to offer to others without expectation of return.
To maximise our potential for success in this ambition we will need to play the part we want to become. Inviting a sense of play in our lives will help us to let go of the expectation of immediate success, and will allow a lightness to our experience that will help us navigate new and unfamiliar behaviours. Play the role that you want to become and invite the spirit of change into your life, embrace the meta story of the death and rebirth of the hero and see what happens.
This is what we will explore at the Mind Fit Community which returns on Thursday 2nd January, 6pm at Retrocave on Ashley Road in Poole. If you want to help develop practical skills for change please come and join us.
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