What’s the Difference Between Making a New Year’s Resolutions and Forming a New Habit?

I avoid New Year’s Resolutions, but I DO like jump starting a new habit by trying it for 30 days straight.  Really what is the difference?  Here’s how they seem different to me:

The very notion of New Year’s Resolutions (which I used to revel in) implies that with the power of my mind, starting in the new year, I can do something that I’ve not been or willing or able to do up until that point:  start exercising, stop eating certain things, cut down on drinking, stop feeding the neighborhood rats, whatever.

This is a weird one for me because I’m practiced in how to work reliably with spiritual principle.  I DO believe in the power of the mind. I DO believe that if I change my thinking I can change my life.  I DO believe in miracles and that old thoughts beliefs patterns and ideas can shift quickly and that it CAN be easy.

However, I also know that research and my experience shows that most of the thoughts I think today or tomorrow are the thoughts I thought yesterday.  And I know that thoughts create my reality.  So if I create a New Year’s Resolution such as “Starting January 1, I will no longer eat chocolate chip cookies” and if I focus on it will my might and all my will, all my body will hear is “chocolate chip cookies” and it will say YES to that.  (It is occurring to me even as I write that while I don’t have chocolate chip cookies, maybe I do have chocolate chips somewhere) As far it as my body is concerned, I took my basic interest in chocolate chip cookies up a notch and it helped me get there.

If we change a pattern of thinking we will have a new experience but, as the example above shows, “resolution” alone is not enough to break a pattern of thinking.  In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza unpacks the science that shows why and how it is so difficult for us to change a pattern of thinking or behavior.  Habits produce neural pathways in our brain which are well-worn grooves down which the thoughts beliefs opinions we had yesterday will drive us to “take that yesterday and plop it down on our tomorrow.”

Are there are ways to change these patterns of thinking?  What Centers for Spiritual Living/Science of Mind has taught as “Spiritual Mind Treatment” for close to a century, Dr. Joe Dispenza now teaches as scientifically proven meditation. In both we unite with all there is and we create a new reality and collapse that new thought/reality/consciousness into a new real experience.  This can happen instantly but it can also take loving practice and support.

One reason 12 step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (or Overeaters Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous, you name it) work for many is that they provide a structure of social support coupled with deep honesty to focus on the present moment.  All of that makes a new habit, one day at a time, possible.

Social science research shows that it takes 30-40 days to establish a new habit.  If one has an addiction, it might take a lifetime to prevent relapse to the old habit.  I’m a big fan of trying something new for 30 consecutive days.  During those days, I always count the days.  If I skip even one day, it’s back to day one.   This is not to be rigid or inflexible.  It’s because it takes 30 CONSECUTIVE days, not non consecutive days.  If I want something to become easy, at first I have to be extremely consistent about it.   

I also check in with an accountability partner about it.  I tell them that I’m going to do it.  I tell them that I did it.   And I tell them if I’m in danger of not doing it.  

Many of the things that I have started (or given up) for 30 days have evolved into lifelong habits.  Some of have flamed out.  If my old habit proves to be exceptionally difficult and exceptionally harmful to myself or others, it may be an addiction which takes even more help (see above).  Whichever they are, they aren’t resolutions anymore because I am not pretending to myself that all by myself, without help, I can suddenly change something that I haven’t been able or willing to by myself before.  YOU might be able to, but I’m not.