Episode 65: Making (and Sticking to) New Year's Resolutions

Hey guys, welcome to the Speaking American English Podcast. My goal is to teach you guys the English spoken here in the States. So if you want to speak like a local American, or you just want to figure out what the heck we're saying, I can assure you this is the right place. So kick back, relax, and let's get ready to rock n roll. This is the Speaking American English Podcast. I'm your host for today, Robert. And I want to wish all of you out there a happy New Year. New Year's is a really exciting time for a lot of us. And this particular New Year was celebrated, I think really enthusiastically, around the world as people said goodbye to 2020, which for a lot of us was a pretty bad year. What with the pandemic, the disruption that that caused to our lives, to our jobs, and to our health. So it was a special moment this year, I think, when 2021 finally came around. We were all pretty happy to see it. So today, we're going to talk about New Year's resolutions, the promises that we make to ourselves at the beginning of the year, that as it turns out, a lot of us have a very difficult time keeping and sticking to as the year goes on. So today, we'll look at where do New Year's resolutions come from? Where does the practice originate? Why do we do them and what kinds of resolutions do we usually make? And then last but not least, why do we have such a hard time following through on the promises that we make and what can we do to improve our odds or our chances of actually completing a year with our resolutions? So let's start out with the New Year itself. Why do we celebrate New Year on January 1st anyway? This is kind of an interesting question. If you live in places like China or Vietnam, in fact, you celebrate your New Year at a completely different time. January 1st isn't really the New Year for you. It's the Western New Year, but it's not the New Year of your culture. If you live in Iran, traditionally, you'll celebrate the New Year on March 21st, which is the first day of spring rather than January 1st. Well, the reason that in Europe and the United States, we celebrate the New Year on January 1st actually goes back to the Roman Empire. I read a very interesting article on the website Earth Sky, which is an astronomy website about the fact that January 1st has no significance for the seasons, nor does it have any significance for the sun or the moon. It's just an arbitrary date, except that in the Roman calendar, it was the first day of the month, January. Now January is named for the Roman god Janus, who, in Roman tradition, was a very unique god who was the god of doors, gates, passages, beginnings and endings, things like that. Now, what's really interesting is that if you ever see pictures of Janus, you'll see one face looking forward and another face looking back, so it's a god with two faces. And that's kind of what we do at New Years. We look back on the year that we just had, what happened, and maybe some things that we didn't do so well, some things that we did do well, some things that we want to do differently, and then we look forward to the next year, and we start to think about how we could improve on our performance. Well, the Romans actually did this, and they would make promises to the god Janus on this day about what they would do in the coming year. So that's where the tradition comes from. Now, what kinds of resolutions do people usually make? Well, a big one for many of us is to be healthier. That means doing more exercise, that means eating less junk food, eating less fast food. That could also mean maybe going to bed earlier, getting more sleep, spending less time on our phones and our screens, that's a big one as well. Other people have different kinds of resolutions that are more about personal growth. For example, people want to learn a new skill like playing the guitar or trying a new sport, for example. Some people even set the goal of learning a new language, and as a language teacher, I think that's a terrific New Year's resolution to have. Now, while it's cool to make New Year's resolutions, it's a nice idea to use this opportunity for some self-reflection and self-improvement. There's a big problem, and that is that most people don't follow through on the resolutions that they make. In fact, the statistics are pretty dire when you see how many people actually follow through on their resolutions. There's a study called the resolution solution that I read, which was published a while ago, but I think is still pretty relevant. This is in the Journal of Substance Abuse, and what they found is that out of all the people they studied over a two-year period, only 19% were actually able to stay true to the promises that they had made to themselves for two years, 19%. That's not very good, right? And they found that even after one week, just one week after New Year's, that would be today, January 7th, already 23% of people had stopped doing what they said they were going to do. So as I said, these statistics are pretty bad. What this shows us is that folks have a really hard time doing what they say they're going to do. Now, why is this? Well, what seems to make it so hard to do what we said we were going to do is the problem of habits. So I've been reading this really interesting book lately by a social psychologist who works at the University of Southern California named Wendy Wood. The book is called Good Habits, Bad Habits, and in it, she discusses how basically all of our behavior, everything we do boils down to habits. We often like to think that if our willpower is strong enough, if our brain, the rational part of our brain, knows that something is bad for us, that we will be able to get rid of it. But the problem is it's not that simple. We can know that eating fast food is not good for us or that looking at our phone in bed when we're trying to go to sleep is not good for us. We know that rationally, but that doesn't stop us from doing it. So the problem is how do we create good habits and how do we get rid of bad habits if we want to have our New Year's resolutions be a success? So Wendy Wood basically says, "The way to do this is not to focus so much on self-control or self-denial, which are things that we typically think of when we think of New Year's resolutions. If I can just deny myself that cigarette, then I'll be a better person." Instead she says that what we really need to do is think about the structure of our lives. We surround ourselves with good things and good routines and good patterns that allow us to have successful behaviors. An example of this that she discusses was going to France, and when she went to France she had this really amazing experience of walking all over Paris. Now if you live in Europe or in a big city in other countries around the world where there's a good network of public transportation, walking and taking the train and taking the bus is completely normal, but in a lot of American cities things are so spread out and public transportation isn't very good and sidewalks are sometimes missing. So people don't really walk as much as in other parts of the world. Well she went to Paris and she loved it. She loved this experience of walking and then she came back to Southern California where she lives in the Los Angeles area, and Los Angeles as many of you might have seen in Hollywood films or have heard is really famous for its terrible traffic, awful, awful car traffic. So what did she decide to do? If she wanted to change her patterns, her behavior, she needed to create a structure that would help her walk more often and use public transportation more often. So what she decided to do was sell her car, that's a pretty big step. And she also says that she convinced her husband to rent an apartment that would be close to the train station, so it was easy for her to walk over there, catch the train to go into work or wherever else she wanted to go. And of course she can bicycle as well and do other things like that. The point of this is that if you want your year, this year, to go differently from the way last year went, you have to change the structure and not just your willpower. Another example of this that she discusses is that people who live closer to their gym are much more likely to exercise than people who live further away. This makes sense when you think about it. Why would you want to go further to do something when you could just not do it at all? So if you really want to exercise more often this year, she says, you need to find a gym that's close to your house. The closer the better, right? So if you can find a gym around the corner, you're much more likely to go there, maybe not on a daily basis, but at least as often as you can. And that is a big difference that you can make in terms of creating good habits. Okay, so now I'm making some resolutions this year for myself, and so far, I am one of those people that managed to make it through the first week with my resolutions intact. So that's pretty cool. One of my resolutions is getting an hour of time walking or cycling outside every day in the sunshine. Why am I doing that? Well, that's because I want to get more vitamin D in my life. As some of you might have heard, scientists and doctors have realized that the level of vitamin D in your system, which mainly comes from sunshine, or almost all comes from sunshine really, is a determining factor in how well your body can resist the coronavirus. So this is really quite interesting. So I thought, okay, I'm going to get outdoors, get some fresh air, get some exercise and also get some vitamin D while I'm at it. So what did I have to do in my life to make that resolution, that new habit possible? What I decided to do was that the moment I finished work, I'll immediately go to the door, get my shoes, put on my sunglasses, maybe a coat and leave the house right then and there. I decided that if I wanted to get out and do that walk and not get distracted, I needed to do it right away. Other than, I don't know, sitting down on the couch for a few minutes, relaxing or maybe going into my room and doing some organizing or something like that or doing some laundry. So I decided, nope, if I'm going to make this habit possible, I have to make it as regular as possible and I have to make it as easy as possible. So the easiest thing to do is just to close my laptop and get out the door and get walking and get some sunshine. So that's one of the ways that I'm trying to achieve my New Year's resolution. And so far, it has worked pretty well. So what about you? What's your resolution for this new year? If you haven't made one yet, don't worry, it's not too late. You can still make one. We're still very much at the beginning of 2021. Maybe it's to study English every day. I think that's a really wonderful goal to set for yourself. How are you going to make that possible? Are you going to maybe listen to some podcasts like Speaking American English? Are you going to take some lessons on a website or with a teacher online? Are you going to read some books in English? Whatever it is that you're going to do, think about how you're going to work that into your everyday life. Maybe there's a good time for you to study English like right after you finish work instead of going on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is, you can put your phone aside and start doing whatever English it is that you're going to do. Whatever your New Year's resolutions are, I wish you lots of success with them. I hope you stick to them throughout the entire year and make them a habit, make them part of your life. And I also hope that you make listening to this podcast a habit as well because every week we're here to bring you great content, lots of vocabulary, great expressions, and lots of help on your English journey. Thanks for listening.