Consider This from NPR - How to Make Better New Year's Resolutions

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

It's that time of year - the ball has dropped, the champagne bottles are empty and you have a list of resolutions to start living your best life in 2023. There's plenty of expert advice to help us succeed at making a budget or running a 5K. But research and polling show that many people fail to reach their goals. If you routinely give up your resolutions by February, maybe the key to succeeding is rethinking the whole idea of what a resolution is.NPR's Elissa Nadworny talks with Marielle Segarra, host of Life Kit about why focusing less on goals and more on intentions may be a better approach to making resolutions. And Faith Hill of The Atlantic shares why she decided to stop making New Year's resolutions. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Every day, I am going to do one thing I have never done before. That, my friends, is my New Year's resolution.

Ooh, that's a good one. Mine is to pilot a commercial jet. I want to do a cartwheel, but real casual-like. I don't know if I'll make a big deal out of it. I said that I would eat more vegetables, and I haven't yet. But it's okay. I still have time. Since last year, I ate none. It's the end of the year. And for a lot of us, that means New Year's resolutions, where we resolve to do big things, small things, sometimes ridiculous things that make great jokes for sitcoms like Friends and The Office. And it can be really hard to resist the whole New Year, New You urge. In, you know, more recent American culture, we have this sort of big self-improvement culture.

Faith Hill is a senior associate editor of The Atlantic, and she has written about the social and emotional impact of making the classic get fit, save money type of New Year's resolution. And part of that is, yeah, you know, I think sort of like the ways that advertising and social media and capitalism have been motivated to have us think that we should always be striving for something better and trying something new, that we should be different. Hill says that in a lot of ways, resolutions just don't work. Not because we give up on our goals, although research and polling shows that a lot of us do. But because we miss the point that some change is less about goals and more about, well, evolving.

The structure of resolutions just doesn't really match a lot of the human experience, at least when it comes to people's most important goals. So, you know, we don't just, like, check being a good parent off the list and move on to something else. We struggle our whole lives to live in line with our values and we get better and then we get worse and then better again, or we succeed in some ways and fail in others. Maybe you have a list of resolutions to start living your best life in 2023. Or maybe you just want to opt out of the whole resolution thing,

but just can't escape feeling the pressure to pledge some kind of self-transformation. Consider this. What if the key to more successful and fulfilling New Year's resolutions is actually not making resolutions? We have a sort of idea often that we can just decide what we're going to accomplish and how things are going to go that can be comforting, but also sort of hubristic. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Alyssa Nadwarny. It's Saturday, December 31st, 2022. I think for me, as with many people, Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. I think for me, as with many people, like the pandemic very much just threw off all of the resolutions that I had made for the year. And the pandemic really has shown us that the future is uncertain.

Faith Hill is a writer and editor for The Atlantic. Back at the start of 2022, she wrote an essay called Resolutions Are Not the Vibe for 2022. She says the piece had a lot to do with the moment we were in, entering the second year of the pandemic and trying to figure out what the new normal even meant. But Hill says that as we enter 2023, she's still in anti-resolution mode. The resolution mentality, I realized, is very much like a way of thinking that places a lot of responsibility on the individual, when in fact our abilities are very much bound up in a lot of factors we can't control. Hill says that a big part of that problem with resolutions is that by their very definition, they are goal-oriented. Instead, she suggests approaching the new year as a time to reflect and think more about why you want to change instead.

Resolutions kind of encourage us to think of our lives as a succession of accomplishments achieved or not achieved. But if we think more holistically about what we value, we might realize that the most important goals are actually really hard to measure. And we also might never finish working towards them. We don't just check off the box. So yeah, I've been sort of, you know, thinking about other ways to consciously reflect on your life. And no matter what approach you take to resolutions, Faith Hiltz says keep a few things in mind. You know, I think it's a matter of being flexible and kind of gentle with yourself and others. And, you know, we're all just doing our best.

And I would say, like, keep trying. But if you feel like you're not nailing these exact resolutions, like, that doesn't mean that you're failing overall. Because in reality, the, you know, big important things don't always break down nicely into doable tasks. For 2023, we resolve to rethink resolutions. That's when we return. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward.

More at iu.edu slash forward. When I've tried to make really rigid resolutions in the past, like they're pretty much done by day three or whatever. And also, you know, it's like we should think about what failure means because you don't have to be objectively good at a thing for it to be a success. That's Mariel Seguera. She's the host of NPR's Life Kit podcast. If you need advice on the best way to do almost anything, from getting along better with your in-laws to finally making a budget and sticking to it, Life Kit has got you covered.

So we asked Mariel for some wisdom on how to successfully make some positive life changes in the new year. I've started leaning more towards intentions than resolutions or goals. You know, because I feel like when we talk about resolutions a lot of the time, it's this very specific, maybe rigid goal. Like, you know, let's say we're talking about the realm of art. A goal could be something like learn how to paint watercolors or get a comic published. And that could be super actionable and help you move forward. But I feel like it can also create, you can create a prison for yourself

that way. And an intention, on the other hand, can be as simple as one word, right? It could be, in this case, creativity. So that is something I talked about recently on Life Kit with our intern, Jamal Michelle. He has an intention to be more creative. I think it's important to remember that we're all capable of artistic and creative expression. You know, we don't have to make the Mona Lisa to feel good about what we're engaging in. And funny enough, it turns out just the act of making any kind of art is good for us. So, right, it doesn't have to be this super rigid thing. And when you choose something that's an intention like that, just be more creative or

make art. There are lots of different ways you can live and breathe that in the year ahead. Yeah, there's like a lot of room for changing or maybe failing a little bit and trying again, etc. Yeah, exactly. Do you have any resolutions like in years past that have kind of crashed and burned or have been successful? Yeah, I would say more so I want to – I don't remember the ones that have crashed and burned because usually those are gone by like day two, right? But once I started doing the intentions thing, that's worked really well for me. So I think I first started doing that a few years ago. And one of them was just be present in my physical body. And I thought it would maybe just be a January thing because January can be such a bleak time of year. And it's often

hard to get exercise because it's so cold in New York, at least. And so I was like, I just need to figure out ways to be moving and to be in my body. But I didn't say, okay, I want to run a 5K. It was, you know, one day I might be doing yoga. Another day, maybe I just like would, I don't know, go take a, I would say take a bath, but I'm not a bath taker. But you could take a bath. Maybe one day I'd go rock climbing or one day it would be I'm going to go for a walk. You know, it could be something somewhat simple or even just like put on lotion so my skin doesn't

feel dry. Right. Like and then but that was so that was supposed to be a January thing. And then it ended up being really a full year thing. And now it's really just an intention like in general of mine. I always try to come back to that's awesome I love that I think the only new year's resolution that ever really stuck for me was to put my socks on before my pants which I've somehow like yeah totally created kind of a habit with that wait why just because like especially if you wear kind of tight pants or like leggings like putting the socks on over it was always like oh now I got to scrunch this pant down over my sock. But now just the rhythm of I wake up, I get dressed, and I put my socks on first.

And it's just been a nice little treat. Girl, I have an idea for you, which is don't wear your socks inside your pants. Just wear them over your pants. Well, maybe that's 2023 for me. Who knows? This is very foreign to me because I'm looking down right now and my socks are outside of my sweatpants. Wow. All right. Well, I'll try it. I'll be open to new things in 2023. Maybe that's my intention. And the sock thing is like a... Yeah. And if you need any help, like if you're not sure what I'm talking about, ring me up, like show you what I mean.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I wonder like why do you think we feel so compelled to make changes, especially around this time of year? You know, I think it's just symbolic, right? Like it gives people a set moment for a fresh start, especially if they want to fix something in their lives or something's been simmering for a while. It can give you an opportunity to have a difficult conversation even. We talked on the show recently about splitting chores, whether that's between partners or housemates. And one of our experts, Eve Rodsky, suggested doing a household chores audit, you know, where you and the people you live with sit down and take stock of every chore and who does it so you can start to notice

patterns and imbalances and make an effort to fix them and i mean that's another kind of thing that you can do for a new year's resolution right like think about what has been hanging over you the past year or what you haven't quite been able to accomplish, like keeping a tidier house. And then sit down and this could be the moment where you open that door and say like, why haven't we kept a tidier house? Hmm, maybe it's my roommate. Yeah. And also you're doing like a little outsourcing there, which I kind of like. Like bringing people on board with the change you want to make. Yeah, that's much better than trying to keep it all

tidy by yourself. Okay, so let's be honest. Study after study has shown that the vast majority of us actually fail at resolutions. So are they just a shame trap? Like, how do we move on if we fail? Yeah. I mean, like I said, I have failed at some before or what society might call failing, which is that I intended to do it and then I didn't do it. But I will say that it's harder to fail at an intention than a really rigid goal. So if you're just like, I want to be present in my physical body, there are a lot of ways to do that. And you have a lot of opportunities. It's not like I'm going to run this 5k on this date. And if I didn't do it, then I failed, you know? Yeah. Because that doesn't take into account also potential injuries or just like the ways that our bodies are always in flux and the way our lives are always in flux.

I love your reframing of the idea of failure. Oh, yeah. I mean, right, you don't have to be objectively good at something to have succeeded. And you also don't even have to finish it. Like you can do just a little bit at a time. This is what Jamal and I were talking about, about making art. That's totally fine. If you put something down and you come back to it days later, it might bring a new perspective you didn't have before. You can even not finish it at all. And

that's totally okay. I think a great rule of thumb to try and implement is putting aside about 10 minutes a day for whatever creative activities you want to work on. Okay. So even I get what Jamal is saying, which is like, you know, you're just going to try a thing and there's no like concrete goals. But I'm just kind of wondering for those like skeptics of the New Year's resolution, like against this whole idea of kind of like making a change. What do you say to them? Oh, I mean, teach their own.

Just you be you. You do you. Yeah. Like on Life Kit, I try very hard not to be prescriptive, right? It's like there are lots of ways to come at this, lots of ways to find contentment, lots of ways to organize your life. I think if you find value in making some sort of resolution, then do it. And if you don't, again, there's nobody standing over your shoulder saying you have to. That was Mariel Seguera, host of Life Kit. They have a resolution planner to help guide you on the path to success in 2023 at their website, npr.org slash life kit. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Alyssa Nadworny.