According to a produce manager I once knew, the month of January sees a big spike in the amount of leafy greens and salads that are sold. This spike will gradually level off and it doesn’t take long until salad sales are at their normal level. This is the inevitable result of New Years resolutions, with everyone deciding all at once that they are going to eat healthier, lose some weight and improve their lives. Clearly, they eventually decide that they were perfectly happy how they were, and the big lifestyle change they promised themselves was inferior to the old lifestyle that they had grown used to.
The New Years resolution is a kind of mass delusion, as though the beginning of the year is really going to lead to meaningful change in our lives just because the calendar rolls over. This is why they often fail, because it’s a societal pressure to make a life change rather than a genuine desire. Someone who actually wants to eat healthy is going to do it whether it’s January 1, July 23 or October 8. Someone who wants to have a New Years resolution, however, is only doing it because that is what you do in January, which is why they abandon the idea after a few weeks and they get cravings for something fried.
It’s not the only time of year where people are influenced by the holiday. People get more generous around Christmas, people get more romantic near Valentine’s Day and people get more macabre near Halloween. We seem to internalize the next holiday and our personalities gradually shift to meet the expectations we have for whichever season we are entering.
The difference is that those holidays are not ones that people expect to make a permanent change. Giving to a local charity during Christmas is going to be great for the charity, it’s going to give you a good feeling, and if the feeling passes once the season has shifted, it has served its purpose. The act of generosity still makes a meaningful impact. Someone might not be more romantic after showering their partner with gifts and flowers after Valentine’s Day, but unless they decide to get engaged it’s not something people expect to last more than a day, even if they would prefer if it did.
The difference with New Years is that it is actually expected to make a lasting difference in people’s lives. A resolution is expected to be permanent, that’s the point, and that’s why they’re always focused on things like health and well being. They don’t stick because it’s a passing feeling like all of the other holidays. It’s an attempt to make a permanent change out of a transient feeling, and that’s not something which will actually work.
Which is not to say that such a resolution is a bad idea. If someone genuinely wants to make a lifestyle change, and it sticks, it could significantly improve their health and well being. It’s also going to be relatively easy in an environment where everyone knows your goals, offering deals on gym memberships and incentives to make that change. To do it permanently requires much more than just a resolution though, it requires a commitment that just jumping on the bandwagon of a season isn’t going to engender. Most seasonal bandwagons can be considered a success whether they are the start of a permanent change or a simple one off, while a resolution requires more permanence.
I wonder if people are more likely to keep with a lifestyle change if they make it during a time that is not New Years. It seems like it would be more successful, it’s not tied to a holiday so it’s not something that is made out of obligation, but is instead something that is done because people genuinely want to do and a change people want to accomplish. This is merely a theory, we need to find a statistically significant number of people to test it. The methodology for testing this theory could involve a survey of people who quit smoking, for example, and then track who kept the cigarettes at bay, who started smoking again, and when they had their ceremonial last cigarette, whether it was at the end of the year or on a day somewhere in the middle. It’s an idea that needs to be tested, purely for intellectual curiosity.
I’ve always been against New Years resolutions, and would never make one myself. They fail more often than not, and the rush to make them does not really make for a permanent change in the lives of most people. I have been less actively against the idea in recent years, surely on occasion they actually work and people actually do make positive lifestyle changes thanks to the practice. Out of millions of people who attempt it each year, we have to have someone for whom the resolution sticks, it’s just the law of averages. I hope that if it’s a change you genuinely want to make and it’s something that will genuinely improve your life, you’re the one person who actually keeps a resolution this year.
