REVAMP Your RESOLUTIONS

Frame Your Goals for the New Year in Positive Language

- MATT COBBLE

AS THE LAST days of 2019 tick away, the blank canvas of 2020 stands dauntingly ahead. Many of us will aim for self-improvement by way of New Year’s Resolutions. However, statistically speaking, the majority of resolutions are disregarded or forgotten by the time Punxsutawney Phil goes looking for his shadow. So why is it that, despite our best intentions on New Year’s Day, our plans for change usually don’t make it off the first page of the calendar?

Mary Joye, a licensed mental health counselor and life coach in Winter Haven, believes she knows why resolutions fail: “Resolutions are RE-Solutions. They can be punitive in nature as they are all about deprivation of calories or increasing exercise you don’t enjoy. A SOLUTION is better. You aren’t trying to re-solve how to get rid of all those holiday calories.” Joye says this initial negative framework sets our brains on a slippery slope away from the change we desire.

“If failure is perceived, negative guilt sets in and positive change stops.”

Luckily for all of us who are wanting to start 2020 on a stronger foot, Joye does have advice on what to do instead: “Solve this problem by adding something good to your life or reframing the language of what you are attempting.”

She uses the example of one of the most common resolutions: I need to try and lose weight. In one sentence, she points out three word choices that put us on the defensive. “‘Needing’ implies lack. ‘Trying’ implies a failure mindset is in place, and ‘lose’ is a negative word.”