How to Keep a New Year’s Resolution

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December 29th, 2009

By Penelope Trunk

I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. We know that people keep less than 5% of New Year’s resolutions, and I think a big reason for this is that anything we are trying to change in our lives is really about self-discipline.

I realized this after spending two years reading what positive psychologists have discovered makes people happy. And, it turns out, that everything we know about what makes us happy comes down to having self-discipline to do what we know want to be doing.

So of course making a New Year’s resolutions doesn’t work, because it’s the act of saying, “I want to make a change, but I’m not going to do it now. I’m going to do it in January.” That’s not self-discipline, that’s procrastination, right?

If you want to make a change in your life, you can start right now, with something that is not that hard to change.

1. Start small.
Because the best way to make a change is to start with something small, relatively easy to do, and not necessarily related to what you want to change. Solving problems is a snowball thing, which might be the most transformative research I have come across in the last five years because it has given me the encouragement to get started on lots of personal changes that look very hard.

For example, if … continue reading …

Note: This blog excerpt was reprinted with permission from the author.