It is not an original way to start a blog about good intentions but yet, sooner or later, we will all find ourselves saying these four little words.
They have a bit of a calming effect that we all need at the end of each year.
However, in those words, often taken for granted, there is a curious psychological phenomenon: scholars speak of the new beginning effect precisely to indicate the tendency of people to change something in their life starting from a time marker, whether it is the beginning of a new week (starting a new diet on Monday), the return from summer holidays (joining the gym at the beginning of a new school year) or the beginning of a new year (the “new year, new life” theory precisely), which explains why at the beginning of the year we are all well-disposed towards good intentions.
British people take such intentions quite seriously (at least they seriously commit to making a list) and they call them New Year’s resolutions.
The most common categories of resolutions are:
- Taking care of one’s physical health, by going to the gym or taking up a new sport
- Cultivating better interpersonal relationships, by reconnecting to old friends or making up with family members
- Investing in personal growth, by starting a language course or perhaps a self-improvement plan
- Achieving better academic results or work results
Unfortunately, however, we are not always able to carry them out as hoped.
I have read that most resolutions are dropped within the first three weeks in the new year, at least here in the UK, which makes people feel even worse than not even setting goals for themselves as they start feeling like quitters.
This is why it is necessary to understand which aspects make good resolutions achievable: if we set ourselves the goal of improving our physical health and our relational and professional life, why throw in the towel right away?
We should set realistic goals for ourselves to achieve truly effective results.
Londoners are enthusiastic about compiling new year’s resolutions, so much so that every year in London they organize free resolution-writing workshops for adults too, normally held at the workplace as a bonding activity.
I have participated once and I can safely say that participants are encouraged to choose action-oriented goals to be more successful in achieving them than those with avoidance-oriented goals.
It means setting goals that push us to stay away from something is less effective than setting goals oriented to doing something.
A life coach explained to us participants that resolutions formulated in a negative way, for example, “I’m going to stop eating junk food” or “I’m going to use my phone less” should instead become “I’m going to eat more vegetables and proteins” or “I’m going to spend more time with my family”.
The life coach also told us that we need to allow ourselves to have moments of self-reward to go after success in achieving the good resolutions set at the beginning of the year.
We therefore should not wait until we completely achieve a goal to reward ourselves, we can give ourselves rewards even while we are still working towards it.
After all this talk about resolutions, goals and success rates, someone might ask “But what if I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions, is there something wrong with me?”.
In reality, not all of us are so open to resolutions: there are also some years in which we feel more motivated and years in which we can allow ourselves to be a bit less goal-oriented.
And if you really can’t think of any good resolution even during the year, I suggest one: coming to visit London if you haven’t already!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
