People Who Have Stuck to Their Vows Share the Secrets of Their Success; the Limits of Willpower.
It is no secret that the odds against keeping a New Year's resolution are steep. Only about 19% of people who make them actually stick to their vows for two years, according to research led by John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.
But those discouraging statistics mask an important truth: The simple act of making a New Year's resolution sharply improves your chances of accomplishing a positive change—by a factor of 10. Among those people who make resolutions in a typical year, 46% keep them for at least six months. That compares with only 4% of a comparable group of people who wanted to make specific changes and thought about doing so, but stopped short of making an actual resolution, says a 2002 study of 282 people, led by Dr. Norcross and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
To explore what separates the winners from the losers, I tracked down several people who have kept their resolutions for a while...
Their stories illustrate several rules for success. Contrary to popular belief, the secret isn't willpower, Dr. Norcross says; people who rely on hopes, wishes or desire actually fail at a higher rate than others. Instead, the successful resolution-keepers made specific, concrete action plans to change their daily behavior.
Their stories illustrate several rules for success. Contrary to popular belief, the secret isn't willpower, Dr. Norcross says; people who rely on hopes, wishes or desire actually fail at a higher rate than others. Instead, the successful resolution-keepers made specific, concrete action plans to change their daily behavior.
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1 comment:
While the inception of a new year is a fitting and appropriate time to make a resolution, one need not wait until that one day out of 365 to modify behavior. We should look for the signs and resolve to daily, or at least weekly, resolve to live by our personal Code and find our Personal Legend. Once we so resolve, we must eviscerate distractions and countervailing forces.
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