New Year’s Resolutions that Create Real Change in 2023
Article Summary
The best new year's resolutions are not resolutions at all. They are about change. They are ways to look at creating healthy habits. Common new year's resolutions are often not kept. Now is a good time to investigate this reason whether you are in the process of creating new year's resolutions for this year or if you have fallen off the wagon over the past year.
There is no better time than the present to consider this.
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When it comes to New Year's Resolutions we think of positive changes in our lives. A brand new year is a great time of year to set new and improved goals. We want to identify new habits and make a fresh start. But where does one begin?
I am going to turn to Robert Dilts's logical levels of change to discuss this. This is a useful model and a great way to understand ways we can achieve change set big goals and overcome the bad habit of not keeping the new year resolution that we set.
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The six logical levels of change are:
Vision or Purpose
Identity
Values and Beliefs
Capabilities
Behaviors
Environment
The best new year's resolutions are not resolutions at all. They are about change. They are ways to look at creating healthy habits.
Common new year's resolutions are often not kept. Now is a good time to investigate this reason whether you are in the process of creating new year's resolutions for this year or if you have fallen off the wagon over the past year.
There is no better time than the present to consider this.
Purpose or Vision
Let's start with our purpose or vision.
Why am I here? A good question to ask is "what am I a part of?"
Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life. This can be the very reason(s) you get up in the morning.
Purpose or Vision = the central motivating aims of your life.
A lot of people do not even consider their purpose or vision when setting common new year's resolutions. It would really be a good idea to consider your larger goal and purpose to create behavior changes and create smart goals.
Your purpose and vision can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For some people, their purpose is connected to their vocation and that vocation provides meaningful and satisfying work.
It helps to have clarity in your purpose when coming up with a new year's resolution or a new goal. You will want to lay the groundwork for change and clearly communicate why you are initiating change.
In the absence of a clear focused purpose when setting a specific goal people will fill that vacuum with their own reasons. And this is where excuses slip in.
And then you have a lot of different purposes and that can potentially lead to moving in different directions and you can end up wasting so much time and energy. Don’t do this!
We want something that can sustain us for the entire year, not just the first few weeks of January. We want to set realistic goals using a growth mindset. And the Robert Dilts model is a great place to start when it comes to setting good new year's resolutions.
Statement of intent
To communicate your vision and purpose, develop a statement of intent, and keep it focused on the future. Define your reasons for setting the goals in the first place. Spend a little time defining your statement of intent. This one thing will really help you in the long run.
Become very clear about this. Remember:
It’s not about WHAT you do but WHY you do it.
Once you have clarity of purpose, you can decide the next steps to where you want to go in the future.
Identity
Changing your identity is about changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, and even the judgments about yourself and others. Most of the beliefs, assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.
Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe. -James Clear Atomic Habits
When it comes to building habits that last—when it comes to building a system of 1 percent improvements—the problem is not that one level is “better” or “worse” than another. All levels of change are useful in their own way. The problem is the direction of change.
Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.
The Recipe for Sustained Success
Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps.
1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
The first step is to decide who you want to be. What do you want to stand for? What are your principles and values? Who do you wish to become?
These are big questions, and many people aren’t sure where to begin—but they do know what kind of results they want: to get six-pack abs or to feel less anxious, or to double their salary.
That’s fine; start there and work backward from the results you want to the type of person who could get those results. Ask yourself, “Who is the type of person that could get the outcome I want?”
Real-life example
Here is an example that we can apply to real life for identity and your bigger goals.
Want to lose weight?
Identity: Become the type of person who moves more every day.
Small win: Buy a pedometer. Walk 50 steps when you get home from work. Tomorrow, walk 100 steps. The day after that, 150 steps. If you do this 5 days per week and add 50 steps each day, then by the end of the year, you’ll be walking over 10,000 steps per day.
Values and Beliefs
Values are like a compass that keeps us headed in the desired direction and are distinct from goals. Great new years resolutions will always consider your values first and foremost as part of your resolution plan.
Goals are the specific ways you intend to execute your values. A goal is something that we aim for and check off once we have accomplished it, like our to-do list.
Everyone has personal values whether the person recognizes them or not. Values are the fundamental beliefs dear to us that govern our lives.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
I love that word harmony. In fact, it is one of the simple ways to determine if your values and beliefs are in alignment with your goals.
When your thoughts, feelings, and actions are in congruence with your personal values, you experience a sense of satisfaction and contentment.
Setting a goal to become a professional athlete when you have not even considered the fact that your fixed mindset has kept you stuck in a level of stagnation is not harmonious and is not a good new year goal.
Do you know your core values?
You want to take a deep look inside yourself to understand your core values. Being in alignment with your personal values makes all the difference in the way you live and work.
When your choices and actions are incongruent with your set of values, you may feel internal stress and conflict. This is often a source of frustration and profound unhappiness.
Common personal core values are achievement, freedom, community, honesty, respect, love, and integrity. Identifying and understanding your core values is a challenging exercise for many people. Being aware of what you value most is important and worth your time and great for your mental health.
When you understand and honor your personal values, it’s easier to make crucial decisions. You are guided by a moral compass in decision-making to determine the best direction for you and your life goals.
Capability, skill, and competence
Capability ranges from behaviors you do without conscious efforts to skills you have learned more consciously. Capabilities refer to plans, strategies, knowledge, and skills needed to achieve a goal. It is considered the ‘how’ level, also known as competence.
Competence can be classified into 4 levels:
Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence
For instance, brushing your teeth might seem to be effortless for you. However, there was a time when you were unconsciously incompetent before you learned to consciously use a toothbrush. Then you developed your skill such that you don’t need anybody’s help to brush your teeth.
Competencies can be learned and trained. Do you remember the first time you drove a car? How competent were you? The capabilities you might need to develop will be different from someone else’s capabilities.
Successful people identify capabilities related to their purpose or vision. They develop crucial skills, continuously learn and grow. Improving your skills with constant learning and consistent series of actions increase your capabilities.
When you stack one skill on the other, you increase your value since the marketplace rewards people with a valuable set of skills. You allow the compound effect principle to work to your advantage thereby increasing your odds of success.
Do you know about the 1% rule?
“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens and when it happens, it lasts.”
—John Wooden
I first read about the 1% rule in The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.
The 1% rule is simple.
Focus on improving your capabilities by 1% each day. Just 1 %, no more. It might seem very little. In the beginning, the improvement will appear negligible. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will you. Great things take time to build.
When you continually improve by 1% each day, those improvements start compounding on each other. Slowly, the good habits you develop stack over time and outweigh the bad habits.
Several months later, the improvement you make in 1 day equals what previously took you a few days to accomplish. When 1% compounds every day, it doubles every 72 days. If you continually improve yourself by just 1% each day, imagine the personal growth in your life at the end of this year.
Behaviors
Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.”
-Stephen Covey
Adopting a new habit or breaking an old one is notoriously hard. Human beings generally do not like change. We stick to old routines for various reasons that may include fear of the unknown or fear of failure.
Researchers Prochaska and DiClemente were originally interested in why some smokers were able to quit on their own while others needed help. They found smokers quit only when they are ready to do so and discovered five stages that can be used to assess a person’s readiness to make a change.
Understanding the science of behavioral change has been insightful in enabling people to make lasting changes. The stages of change model have been an effective construct in understanding how people go through change successfully.
Three important considerations for modifying behavior include:
Readiness to change
Barriers to change
Expect relapse
You could explain everything about a healthy lifestyle to someone and be sorely disappointed at the end if you don’t know at what stage the individual is currently in. When someone is not ready to change, your information goes from one ear and out the other. They probably need an espresso of a growth mindset.
Stage 1 Precontemplation
During the pre-contemplation stage, you have no conscious intention of making a change. People in this stage may not recognize their behavior is unhealthy due to a lack of awareness or information.
Most people might be in denial and tend to avoid thinking about unhealthy behavior. For a person to move past pre-contemplation, you need to sense the unhealthy behavior is holding them back from attaining important personal goals.
Stage 2 Contemplation
At this stage, people become increasingly aware that the behavior is a problem. You consider the potential benefits of making a change and weigh the cost.
You may resist change as the costs tend to stand out. Ambivalence may cause you to re-weigh the benefits and costs. This stage can last months or even years. You may experience conflicted emotions about changing as you view the time and effort involved in change. Most people prefer to be in their comfort zone and procrastinate.
The key to moving to the next stage is a shift from an abstract idea to a belief that modifying your behavior is beneficial to you. You need to ask yourself why you want to change.
Congruent people tend to think of intrinsic or internal reasons to change. It might be helpful to make a list of the pros and cons of behavior change and identify barriers and think about how to overcome them.
Stage 3 Preparation
During the preparation stage, you are ready to start taking action. This stage typically lasts a few weeks. You might take small steps that will prepare you to make the required change.
People may share their plans to change with friends and family who may offer advice. Gather information about ways to change your behavior and do your research.
It’s important to write down your goals and prepare a plan of action if you want to increase your chances of making a lasting change. I love Notion for this!
Stage 4 Action
Once you have a plan, you need to take direct action in order to accomplish your goals. If you don’t spend enough time in preparation, it is difficult to progress in action due to temptations from people or your environment.
It’s important to fight urges that could cause you to slip back into old habits. When you work towards your goals, reward yourself for positive behavior. Reinforcement and support are extremely important to strengthen your commitment and move forwards.
Remind yourself regularly of the belief in making change and the benefits that will come.
Stage 5 Maintenance
In the maintenance stage, you have changed your behavior and you need to turn it into a habit. Be aware of situations where you might be tempted to slip back into old habits.
Avoid temptations and aim to replace these old habits with positive actions. Reward yourself so you can avoid a relapse. Surround yourself with supportive people whom you trust.
Relapse
Relapses commonly occur in behavior change. If you lapse back to the old behavior, don’t beat yourself up.
Take it as a minor setback. Analyze what led to the relapse and identify possible triggers. Avoid the triggers in the future and don’t give up on yourself.
Environment
The environment encompasses everything outside of yourself. It is the state of the external context where people live.
Your surrounding influences your thoughts, feelings, and actions every day. The choice of clothing a person wears is heavily influenced by the climate.
In New York, people can be found wearing coats during winter. If you live in a tropical country, you don’t need a winter coat. Recognizing the impacts of the environment on your livelihood is vital.
More on environment
Meet John, a University student who wants to be healthier. He lives with his friend and roommate, Tom, who is less health-conscious. John has decided to eat nutritious food. He wants to stop eating so much junk food. He made a good start by carefully selecting groceries and cooking instead of ordering take-out.
As the weeks went by, it became more difficult to stick with his routine. Cooking took significant time and effort while Tom ordered take-out almost every day. The savor of the pizza Tom just ordered reminded John of the convenience of just ordering online. The temptation to fall back into old habits was very high.
We can observe environmental factors that antagonized John’s effort to be healthier. If John wants to adopt and maintain a healthy habit, he needs to consider the conditions in his environment.
In order to set the best conditions to be healthy, John needs to start by talking to Tom. Imagine if John and Tom agreed to cook together and shared the chore. It would take less time if both were chipping in. Cooking for two people is more cost-effective than cooking for one.
John would not be exposed to cues that constantly remind him of fast food. Tom would cut his spending on take-out and eat nutritious meals. The environment in the home would enable John to adopt a sustainable habit without resistance.
The odds of adopting and maintaining a habit are higher when you set the best conditions in your environment to work in your favor. Just sayin’!
Conclusion
Being conscious of the six logical levels will help when setting new year’s resolutions that work:
Purpose and vision
Identity
Values and beliefs
Capabilities
Behaviors
Environment
These logical levels can help you understand at what level you are attempting to make a change.
Sometimes, we might waste time trying to make a change at a lower level when we need to consider a higher hierarchical level to achieve that change. If you want to achieve the desired change in life, think about the logical level you are operating.
Thank you for spending part of your day with me. I trust that you found this helpful. If you know someone who can benefit from this article feel free to share it with them using the simple share buttons to the side.
Until next time I’ll see you next time! Peace out and Namaste.
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