You set your intentions. You make awesome new year’s resolutions. And then…
… you want the best strategy to be sure you follow through. All throughout the year!
We have the answer. Well, it is an answer, one of many, all of them great.
Our answer is to tie your resolutions to what you already do, and to make your predictions “self-correcting”. Let’s break these down further.
Going back to the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, it has been asserted that to flourish in life, we should be acting in alignment with our identity. Having your resolutions follow this path of life alignment accomplishes a few points:
- The actions for your resolutions get triggered by what you already do,
- The resolutions seem more familiar and connected to you and your identity,
- The activities have less chance of primal pushback from your brain (this is the energicial intellience part).
Making your resolutions “self-correcting” ties back to how we navigate our lives. Our brains have a primary function to keep us alive. One of their tools is to spot when things go wrong.
For example, you walk barefoot in a dark room, and your brain predicts that you will walk across an unobstructed floor. But someone else left something on the floor, which you hit with your toe. Surprise! And your brain figuratively lights up, as it says “This is an error, I must correct”. This “reward prediction error” comes from the difference between the result (aka reward) you experienced, versus the reward that was predicted.
With your promises to yourself, you predict, and you resolve, to change your behavior in the new year. Your brain tries to work this new prediction in, but it also is comfortable in your current behaviors. It takes energy – don’t worry, you have enough energy – to monitor for when your brain tries to correct your new behavior.
You can make these new behaviors “self-correcting”, though. Your brain auto-corrects the wrong way in the absence of reminders. You become what you think about, as Earl Nightingale stated. So repetition is a way to build up the new pattern. Repetition can be in words, thoughts (such as affirmations), visual and auditory reminders in your environment, and from the help of apps, friends, and others.
Wrapping up, we have:
- Align your resolutions with your existing or normal activities.
- Set up resolutions for which you can use the power of repetition to (reset your brain/train/etc.)
- Use self-correcting techniques to override your brain’s error-correction tendencies
The video in this post has a summary, and we recommend you continue learning by signing up for our free online course on resolutions. Making resolutions and goals, at any time, are one of the most valuable personal development steps you can make.