New year, new me?

New year, new me?

The first few weeks of the new year are characterized by new gym memberships, diet plans, and, most importantly, detoxing from the holiday season (cheers!). The beginning of the new year is the time for self-assessment of accomplishments from the past and setting resolutions for the future. It can be described as a cleansing ritual that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. January starts great, but then comes February…

The University of Scranton reports that 92 percent of people who set New Year’s goals never achieve them (or for the optimists, 8 percent of people achieve them!). This post is meant to help you become the 8 percent so that this time next year you can reflect back and say “holy crap, I did it.”

In 1928, Silver Bridge was built to connect Ohio and West Virginia over the Ohio River. Fast forward to 1967, the suspension bridge collapsed during rush hour traffic, tragically taking the lives of 46 people. Evaluation of the collapsed bridge showed that the bridge had multiple stress cracks in it and ultimately was carrying much heavier loads than it had originally been designed for. Thinking about it, we aren’t too much different than a suspension bridge. Society places loads on us that we may have not been originally designed to carry. If we continue on without modification, we can crack under the pressure and fail to achieve our goal. This ties in nicely to the first few tips; make your resolution achievable, don’t beat yourself up if you get off track a bit, and allow other people to know your goals.

Research done by Matthews at Dominican University shows us that individuals were most successful reaching goals when the goals were written down, an action plan was created and written down, and check in’s with a trusting accountability partner occurred weekly. The study included 5 groups over a 4-week span: Group 1 was instructed the simply think about their goals, Group 2 wrote their goals down, Group 3 wrote goals and formulated action commitments, Group 4 did the same as 3 but sent goals and plan to a supportive friend, and Group 5 did the same as 4 but also sent weekly progress reports to supportive friends. The findings indicated Group 5 was the most successful at reaching their goals, Group 4 achieved a statistically significant amount more than Group 3, and all groups achieved significantly more than Group 1. The recipe for success? Write down your goals, write down your action steps, share it with a friend, and send reports to your friend of the progress.

A 2015 review by McEwan et al. showed another statistically significant effect of goal setting interventions in relation to physical activity behaviour. This review covered studies comparing a control group that set no goals for physical activity to groups that had goals of just becoming more physical active. The groups with goals became more active, whilst the control groups did not.

The Scranton study shows us that it can be part of our human nature to fail our resolutions rather than achieve them. A significant part of human nature is routine, though. In order to achieve your resolution, you must make it a part of your everyday lifestyle. In general, we make our goals too specific. “I’m only going to eat X amount of calories per day” is a common goal I hear from individuals starting a new diet plan when they have had no prior experience in counting calories. Begin with a goal that is achievable. If your day is already packed with stress and your goal adds more stress to your routine, how likely is it that you keep striving to reach the goal? A better goal in this example might be, “I’m going to pay attention to how my energy level feels after each meal.”

Potentially the most important aspect of goal setting is to make them mindful and positive to improve intrinsic motivation. Athletes will commonly create performance-based goals such as “improve my 40-yard dash time to 4.4” or avoidance-based goals such as “I’m going to avoid a knee injury this year.” A meta-analysis by Lochbaum and Gottardy in 2013 showed that performance-based goals had the largest facilitative impact on performance, whereas avoidance-based goals had insignificant and even detrimental effects on performance.

Reach out with questions/comments; I will write a goal and action steps to respond to you, send this goal and action plan to Dr. Jason Tuori, and then send a progress report to him. Practice in action… Happy New Year!!!

References:

1. From: https://www.dominican.edu/academics/lae/undergraduate-programs/psych/faculty/assets-gail-matthews/researchsummary2.pdf
2. Mcewan D, Harden SM, Zumbo BD, et al. The effectiveness of multi-component goal setting interventions for changing physical activity behaviour: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Health Psychol Rev. 2016;10(1):67-88.
3. M. Lochbaum, J. Gottardy. A meta-analytic review of the approach-avoidance achievement goals and performance relationships in the sport psychology literature J Sport Health Sci, 4 (2015), pp. 164-173