As we approach a new year, it is common for us to take stock
of our lives and think about things that we’d like to do differently in the
coming year. Often, the resolutions we
think about are negative resolutions.
That is, we have some behavior that we currently perform that we’d like
to stop. It might be quitting smoking,
or eating less junk food, stopping drinking or drugs, or even cutting back on
bad language.
Unfortunately, if we are thinking about these kinds of resolutions,
it is probably not for the first time. Mark
Twain is supposed to have said that quitting smoking is one of the easiest
things he ever did, he has done it thousands of times.
There are many reasons why stopping these behaviors are
difficult, and I have written about some of these difficulties in past
entries. Here, I want to focus on the
form of the resolution itself.
I called these resolutions “negative resolutions” because
they focus on a behavior to be stopped.
Often, this behavior is already a habit, and so it is strongly driven by
the environment. That is, parts of your
environment already suggest the behavior to you. Just drinking a cup of coffee may promote the
desire to smoke. Walking through the
kitchen may increase the urge to eat.
In order to try to stop a behavior, you have to think about
that behavior consciously. That is, if
you want to cut down on your eating, you must exert effort to think about what
you are doing. To watch yourself to make
sure that you don’t eat too much.
Research by Peter Herman, Janet Polivy and their colleagues
suggests that people who are actively trying to diet become “restrained
eaters.” Restrained eaters are people
who are thinking about their diet and about restricting the amount of food they
eat. The problem with being a restrained
eater is that it creates a paradox. You
want to stop eating, so you have to think about your eating behavior. The more you think about eating, the more
that concepts related to food and eating stay active. As I have discussed in previous posts, when a
concept is active, it is easier for people to perform actions relating to that
concept.
So, focusing on reducing your eating can actually make it
harder for you to eat less. The same is
true for any negative resolution.
Thinking about not smoking or drinking or cursing will activate related
concepts, which will make it easier to smoke, drink, or curse.
In the end, the problem lies with the resolution
itself. You cannot replace something
with nothing. The habit system will
still have connections between the environment and your behavior, and so it
will continue to suggest the behavior you are trying to stop. As a result, you will have to continue
thinking about stopping the behavior.
So, rather than making negative resolutions, make positive
ones. Do not resolve to stop smoking,
resolve to start exercising. If you
really start an exercise program, your smoking will get in the way, and you
will have a reason to stop. Do not
resolve to eat less, resolve to eat differently. Cut red meat out of your diet, and start
eating other foods. With the number of
really good meat substitutes on the market now, it is easy to replace high-fat
foods with low-fat foods without sacrificing taste.
If you focus your energies on positive resolutions, then you
will not suffer the paradox of negative resolutions. If you start exercising, you will not be
consciously thinking about smoking. You
will have removed one source of failure in your resolutions.
