Flourish Health & Wellbeing Magazine - Dec23 - Flipbook - Page 9
None of these are par琀椀cularly surprising.
Indeed, it’s easy to get caught up in the
“New Year, new me” hype and it o昀琀en leaves
us making big goals that we want to achieve.
While it’s good to have big dreams to strive
for, these type of goals are 琀椀cking 琀椀me bombs.
No琀椀ce how very few resolu琀椀ons are to
complete something simple and speci昀椀c like
doing 昀椀ve pushups a day or reading one
sentence of a book. While these examples
are perhaps overly simple, it’s safe to say that
you’re more likely to achieve them. Big goals
like “I’m going to lose 15 kilograms this year”
are great, but without the knowledge of how
you’re going to get there, you’re less likely to
achieve the goal. A New Year’s resolu琀椀on needs
to be achievable, relevant and 琀椀me-bound to
be a success.
A second key reason why most New Year’s
resolu琀椀ons fail is that they don’t match our
values and, deep down, we really don’t want to
do the hard work to get there. We’re more
likely to want to achieve a task if the action
gives us a hit of dopamine (the feel-good
hormone). Our brains release dopamine when
we do pleasurable activities like listening to our
favourite music, lounging in the sun, or ea琀椀ng
our favourite foods.
Because we know that too much of our
favourite food is o昀琀en bad for us, a common
pledge is to cut down our intake of it and
replace our habit with a goal like “ea琀椀ng more
vegetables”. The problem with this goal is our
natural inclina琀椀on is to treat ourselves and,
because we don’t enjoy ea琀椀ng more vegetables,
we’re less likely to do it on a regular basis.