Psychologist Julie Battle has the scoop on if resolutions work, strategies to succeed in your goal setting and which resolutions are most popular as we move into 2023.
Julie Battle is a licensed psychologist and the current Chair of the Lynn J. Darby School of Psychology and Adolescent Counseling at Brenau University in Gainesville. With the new year upon us, many people are motivated to start 2023 on the right foot by setting new goals. However, there exists a trend of resolution nay-sayers—claiming new year goals are broken more often than they are kept.
“Well, everybody's kind of right,” Battle said. “The research shows that resolutions can be effective, but you know, about 50 to 55% of the time, people feel like they successfully follow their resolutions. So a lot of times they're not successful, a lot of times they are, but there are ways that people can improve the resolutions that they make to have a better chance at being successful.”
A popular way to start your goal setting is to employ a method known as SMART. Battle said using the acronym to pick apart your resolutions will help them be more sturdy as the weeks and months go on.
“The word SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-framed,” Battle said. “So we need to set goals that are pretty specific. So a lot of people make the mistake of setting something too general like ‘I'm going to be healthy. I'm going to eat well. I'm going to exercise in the new year.’ And those are too general, we need to be really specific and in being specific, if we can set our goal in a way that is measurable, we're going to have more chance at being successful. So ‘I'm going to exercise 30 minutes a day, at least two days a week.’ That's much more specific, much more measurable, we actually know if we've met that goal.”
One of the most important aspects of goal setting Battle brought up is the idea of setting resolutions that are positively oriented, rather than negative.
“Set our goals to say what we want to do, not what we don't want to do,” Battle said. “So rather than saying, ‘I'm not going to eat sweets,’ say, ‘I'm going to eat more vegetables.’ We tend to be more successful if we say what we want to do, rather than what we don't want to do.”
Paired with setting positive goals is the concept of measuring behaviors that are within your direct control. Setting a goal like, “I am going to lose 20 pounds,” can be difficult because it may not be completely in your control. That being said, other behaviors that correlate to weight gain and loss, such as eating habits and physical fitness routines, are within your direct control. Battle said it is far better to set interim or compartmentalized goals that build toward something bigger.
Another contributor to the success of goal setting is your inclination to share resolutions with a close friend or family member.
“If you can get somebody to do it with you, that's great,” Battle said. “If you're gonna, you know, exercise if you can get somebody to be your exercise buddy who will exercise with you? That's fabulous. That's even better than just checking in with somebody. But if you can't, because sometimes we can't get those folks, then certainly being accountable to somebody who's going to ask, and again, in a supportive way, not in a punishing way.”
Setting goals can sometimes lead to guilt-driven spirals when you inevitably fall short on a daily metric. Battle said that while it's vital to set goals that drive and challenge you, it’s equally important to be flexible and understand that you’ll make mistakes along the way.
“Sometimes we don't know what the right level is when we start,” Battle said. “So we need to modify as we go. So we set a goal, if it if we find it too easy, then we can modify and make it a little harder. If we find it too hard, we can modify and make it a little easier. So if you start with, ‘I'm going to exercise five days a week,’ and you really try and that's just not doable, then cut that back to three days. So yeah, definitely being flexible and modifying as we go.”
The most common types of resolutions are typically tied to physical health. Goals having to do with diet, exercise, sleep, water consumption and weight loss are all extremely popular. However, in the wake of COVID-19, Battle said she is seeing more people focusing on mental health initiatives than ever before.
“With COVID, I think people were starting to realize how big mental health issues are,” Battle said. “And they got worse during COVID when everybody was isolated. So I feel like that one's probably going to increase where people will have more goals related to mental health and to better sleep.”
Often enough, goals and resolutions are constructed with the purpose of potentially developing better habits. If someone is setting a goal that involves eating healthier and reading more often, the underlying intent is to take that behavior and translate it into a life-long habitual activity. While that goal is not always overtly successful, the surface intent still pushes us in the right direction.
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