How to get a New Year’s Resolution to stick

Imagine a family where every year, Mom tells the kids that this year, they really need to do their homework before they play video games. Mom is 100% sincere in her desire for the kids to do their homework first thing. She’s resolved. She’s committed. But the kids don’t do it. Why not?

Well it’s not much of a mystery, is it? The kids were the ones who needed to be resolved in order for this to happen. But they weren’t. Mom wanting it real bad doesn’t guarantee anything on their end.

The problem with New Year’s resolutions

That’s what goes on inside of us when we set a New Year’s Resolution in the usual way. A conscious—and conscientious—part of our personality sets the resolution. But in order to follow through with it, the subconscious, emotional parts of us—the parts that try to keep us rested and happy—have to be on board. Because those subconscious parts of us have a lot of say over what we do.

But every year, we give the parent-like parts of us a pep talk: “Are you committed? Do you really want this? Can you taste it? It’s gonna be so great! Let’s go!” And then we’re disappointed when the kid-like parts of us do the same thing they always do.

Those subconscious parts don’t always send us verbal thoughts. Instead of thinking, “homework is boring, I think I’ll play video games instead” they just click over to something more interesting. We feel like we did it “without thinking.”

So instead of seeing what’s going on, we often pathologize ourselves. We conclude that there’s something irreparably wrong with us and achieving a New Year’s resolution is just not in the cards.

But there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s something right with you—your kid-like parts want to have fun and avoid things that might be painful, boring, or overly tiring. They’re looking out for you just as much as your parent-like part is.

The solution

So the solution isn’t to get rid of your kid-like parts (it wouldn’t work anyway). And it’s not to hype up your parent-like part even more. That’s how you get perfect adherence to your goal for two weeks and then never do it again. The way to get your New Year’s resolution to stick is to get your kid-like parts on board with your goal.

You might think there’s just no way. Kids like video games and hate homework and that’s just the way of the world. But when you really listen to these parts of you, they get a lot more reasonable. You might have to pick a slightly different goal than what you had in mind in order to get their buy-in, but in exchange for setting more realistic expectations of yourself, you get more real results.

My series on how to talk to your parts has some tips you can use to get in touch with your subconscious parts so that you can find out what they actually want. When they know you understand where they’re coming from and appreciate how they look out for you, they’ll be more willing to listen to you in return. And with the lines of communication opened like that, you can ask what would need to be tweaked about your idea for a New Year’s resolution in order for them to give it the okay.

If you’d like my help listening to your kid-like parts and finding a New Year’s resolution that your whole “internal family” can agree on, I’m offering a complimentary session to people who haven’t worked with me before. You don’t have to buy anything, and there’s no sales pitch—it’s just a holiday gift. I have from now until December 15th to deliver these gift sessions before I go on vacation for the holidays, so snap one up and pick a resolution that feels good in your bones.

UPDATE: This offer is closed now. Thank you so much to everyone who took me up on it, I had an amazing time meeting new people and their parts! Rooting for you all in the new year!

If you missed this offer but still want help deciding what to focus your productivity on, consider a Discernment Session.