7 Psychological Tricks To Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions
A new year arrives and, with it, something inevitable: the illusion of a new beginning the desire to undertake projects that make us improve as people and break with the problems of the past, the desire to leave behind habits that we do not like…
To what extent these exciting ideas are more fanciful or more realistic depends to a greater extent on us, on our abilities and on the desire we put into them. However, there is another factor to take into account: the possibility of using what we know about the human mind to make our new goals easier to achieve.
Or what is the same, the option of knowing and applying certain psychological tricks to face the challenges that will come in the best conditions.
Here you have 7 keys that will help you be a little closer to that “I” of the future who you want to become.
1. Concrete your objectives
It is common to create New Year’s resolutions that are too abstract or ambiguous to be pursued. For example, desires like “I want to be freer” or “I’m going to learn more” usually come to nothing precisely because we don’t even know what specific goals we should reach. What does it mean to be free? What do we want to learn?
That is why it is important that, from the beginning, let’s have clear, rather concrete goals This, on the one hand, will ensure that we have consistent objectives over time (which will allow us to approach them and not other “distractions”) and, on the other, will make it possible to evaluate in the most objective way possible. whether we have fulfilled our New Year’s resolutions or not.
In the previous point we talked about the importance of detailing as much as possible the objectives or sub-objectives that we want to achieve. However, once this is done we can transform these specific goals into intervals with a maximum and minimum value that mark what we consider acceptable. For example, If we want to lose weight, it is better to set the sub-goal of losing between 1.2 kg and 0.8 kg every two weeks You have to set the goal of losing 1 kg. biweekly.
This is because there is evidence that if we set goals at intervals, we perceive them as something more achievable and more motivating.
3. Plan short-term goals
This step, in reality, serves to avoid always leaving for tomorrow the tasks that, to achieve your New Year’s resolutions, you should start today That will be an almost irresistible temptation if you do not set intermediate goals (between your current situation and the end of the year that begins) at very specific times on the calendar, but if you divide your personal development plans into several pieces and make them distribute them In small daily or weekly goals, you will have a much easier time meeting your objectives.
For that, there is nothing like making well-established schedules and setting short deadlines to reach your small personal goals.
4. Use a physical calendar
Having a physical calendar and placing it in a place that you see very often is important because… it is more important to run away from it! If your calendar is digital, you can probably only see it if you want, by clicking on certain buttons. Instead, a paper calendar with notes and dates marked in bright colors is harder to ignore Even if you want to do it.
Several studies suggest that New Year’s Eve and the first days of January are a unique date to start seriously with your projects. The reason is that in this small period of time, and not in another, people tend to consider that we have changed by the fact of having passed through that temporal border that is New Year’s Eve and, therefore, we think that it is easier to “unlearn.” old habits and adopt new ones while we are in those days.
It is something like a window of opportunity that opens on our calendar and that could make us less inclined to resist change. Possibly this also occurs on a longer time scale: according to research, people with an age whose last digit ends in 9 (29, 39, etc.) They have a greater desire to undertake new projects and give new meaning to their lives
Knowing this is important, because although it is something irrational and unconscious to a certain extent, we can take advantage of it in a very rational way. The method is simple: if we are predisposed to stop thinking about ourselves as people chained to their habits, it is better to start adopting new habits right at that moment and not at another. This will make the transition to this new way of behaving more comfortable and more likely to be successful.
6. Take advantage of peer pressure
In the field of psychology it has long been known that Group pressure is capable of raising our ability to exert effort in a very significant way For example, psychological therapy programs to quit smoking tend to be more successful if they are carried out in group sessions, and the performance of athletes also improves when they make an effort alongside other people who do the same, even if theoretically they are not competing against each other. Yeah.
That is why it is a good idea to share your New Year’s resolutions with other people and for them to do the same in turn, to share everyone’s aspirations. This will create a kind of contract around these promises that will be more difficult to break and will make us shy away from the tempting possibility of throwing in the towel.
7. Make an assessment of the year that has passed
This part may seem less exciting and exciting than the task of setting goals and imagining the future that is yet to come, but it is also very necessary. Because? Because allows us to give meaning to the idea of ​​setting new year goals or what is the same, make it so that at the moment when a new period of our lives begins, we see the option of setting new goals for ourselves again as something interesting, as we are accustomed to taking this as a serious and important project.
In addition, of course, this will allow us to see our progress in certain areas of personal development, which is very motivating and will make us want to face the challenges that are to come.
