The Power of the Fresh Start: Why the naysayers about New Year’s resolutions are wrong

I’ve heard it at least five times since the beginning of the year — that New Year’s resolutions are a waste of time. There’s a bit of smug satisfaction in thinking that we know better than the masses who are deluding themselves at the gym this week. If I want to make?real?change, the thinking goes, I just need to put my head down, commit, and push through the difficult part…right?

Behavior change is complex, with plenty of traps along the way. And while it’s true that most New Year’s resolutions do fail — the number hovers between 88% to 92% — they might fail for reasons that are different than you think.

It turns out there is scientific legitimacy to the feeling of a fresh start — that surge of motivation is real and it does help. But with something as difficult as behavior change, we can’t rely?solely?on motivation — not because motivation doesn’t work but because motivation isn’t enough. The real problem is that we’re using a?single tool?when what we need is a?toolkit.

The Fresh Start Effect

If you unpack the thinking of the New Year’s naysayers, what you’ll find is an idea that doesn’t line up with the science. What I hear in naysayer language is an implicit belief that fresh starts don’t matter and they often bring up the dismal statistics to prove their point. Touché. But correlation is not causation and, delightfully, the behavior change puzzle is much more interesting.

Fresh starts do matter. The problem may?not?be — as the naysayers imply — that we use them, but actually that we don’t use them?enough. According to Dr. Katy Milkman:

New beginnings offer a kind of psychological “do-over.” People feel distanced from their past failures; they feel like a different person–a person with reason to be optimistic about the future. We’re more likely to pursue change on dates that feel like new beginnings because these moments help us overcome a common obstacle to goal initiation: the sense that we’ve failed before and will, thus, fail again. (How to Change, p. 22)

It’s as if mentally placing our failures “in the past” puts them in a different category, which helps those failures feel less personal — a clean slate.

Scientifically speaking, failures tend to lower our sense of “self-efficacy” — the belief that we can influence the outcomes in our lives. And if our self-efficacy is low, we’re much less likely to be successful at our New Year’s resolutions. As Dr. Albert Bandura and others?have argued, self-efficacy is one of the biggest predictors of success. Whether or not we?believe?our actions will have a real impact in our lives tells our brains whether putting in the effort is worth it. If we believe our actions will produce results, our brains unlock free motivation to help us get there. If we don’t, it stays locked up. A fresh start helps you?believe?again because it wipes away the perception and the feeling of past failures. And it’s that belief that then fires up the free motivation that could start to tip the odds in your favor.

Dr. Milkman goes on to argue that it’s not just the New Year that can give us the feeling of a blank slate, but that we can take advantage of the?“fresh start effect”?at many other times of the year, including birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, the first day of the month, the first day of the week, the start of a new semester, etc. There’s free motivation for the taking — and all it takes is a couple of seconds to?see it?and?frame it?as a fresh start. Once you start looking for fresh starts, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. Why?wouldn’t?you harness the tool of free motivation if it could help you achieve your goals?

You Need A Toolkit

But motivation isn’t the only tool in town. And remember, with something as hard as behavior change, you need to put as many tools as possible on the table. Other tools include?behavioral geo-fencing,?forcing functions,?giving yourself “two stamps,”?tracking, accountability, if/then plans,?mini habits,?elastic habits, and a whole lot more! Just as you wouldn’t believe anyone who told you they built an entire house with a hammer, you shouldn’t be surprised that you can’t build an entire set of habits using only motivation. It’s not that hammers aren’t useful in building a house. They are. It’s simply that they’re incomplete. Just as with successfully building a house, the more behavior change tools you have at your disposal, the more likely you are to successfully stick to your 2023 resolutions.

So next time you run into a New Year’s naysayer, give them a hug and gently remind them that they’re right — motivation?alone?doesn’t work. It takes an?entire?toolkit to successfully change your behavior.

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Also published on the?Brain by Design blog?and?in?Better Humans?on January 9, 2023.