Beating an addiction or bad habit for your New Year’s Resolution?
Start by fixing your life.
The compressed, high-octane season of annual traditions comes to an end with its traditional dénouement – the New Year’s Resolution.
According to one survey last year 45% of Americans usually make a New Year’s Resolution and only 8% will succeed at them. If I’m surprised by anything in those numbers, it’s that as many as 8% succeed.
If you’re amongst the New Year’s Resolutioners this year the odds are stacked against you. If you want it to be different this time it’s probably a good idea to think about why.
The good
In and of itself, a New Year’s Resolution is no bad thing. Any recognition that there’s something about yourself that could be better, some bad habit you need to break or something you aspire to that you want to achieve, shows a healthy self-awareness, self-respect and a desire for self-improvement.
And for the 8%, based on our survey, who actually achieve their aim, they’ve both improved something about themselves and benefited from the positive momentum of improving something about themselves. Just as negativity can propel you downwards, positivity breeds positivity and makes your next aim in life that little bit more achievable.
Amongst the 55%, based on our survey, who didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution last year, there will be some who lack that self-awareness or desire for self-improvement. At least you’re trying and have something to try for.
But many of them won’t have made a New Year’s Resolution because they think they’re pointless or dumb. And I’m inclined to agree with them. In fact I’d go further. I think they are fundamentally flawed.
Here’s why.
The bad
Complicated though we may think we are, when it comes to our drives we couldn’t be simpler. Faced with two choices our instincts will always push us towards doing that which we perceive as giving us the most “benefit”.
Whatever your New Year’s Resolution is, if you wanted it enough, if it was really going to “benefit” you more than the alternative, you’d already be doing it. You wouldn’t need to wait for some arbitrary date to start. You’d be fighting yourself not to have started.
Take losing weight for example. You perceive a benefit in losing weight – being more attractive, being fitter and being healthier. You get a benefit from eating what you want, when you want – the physical, biochemical pleasure of consuming nice food. Your instincts are judging the “reward” of both and driving you in one particular direction.
If the direction your instincts choose is continuing to over-eat then you don’t believe enough in the benefits of losing weight. Otherwise your instincts would be making you eat less.
Your only tool to achieve your New Year’s Resolution then, is willpower. That’s an awful tool to rely on. It means not only that you’re fighting yourself every step of the way, but you’ll most likely have to go on fighting yourself afterwards to make it stick.
The smoothest road to what you want to achieve is one that follows your instincts. If your instincts are working against what you believe you want, or what you believe you should want, you should either give in to your instincts and save yourself the trouble, or work on being better motivated by your goal.
This is a mind-game. I know people who’ve quit smoking after watching a close friend or relative die of smoking-related diseases, or who’ve successfully lost weight having seen the same happen to the long-term obese. You just need to find something, some experience or some associated goal. Maybe the effect on your kids, or the effect on your family, or something building on it that you want to achieve. Anything that tips the balance.
The ugly
We’re all hard wired for chemical highs. Every beneficial thing we do gives us a biochemical reward. Exercise, sex, eating, competing, winning; even tanning releases a dopamine high.
If you’re living a healthy, balanced, productive life you’ll be regularly rewarded with frequent shots of pleasure giving chemicals.
Vices give you chemical highs too – smoking, drinking and over-eating being the big-ticket examples.
Many people, like myself, enjoy vices in moderation but are never troubled with addiction. I enjoy a couple of drinks a couple of times a week, the occasional cigar or perhaps a big meal from time to time. I can take them or leave them. I’m contented either way.
I regularly hear talk of “addictive personalities”, how perhaps some people are genetically prone to addiction. This has the whiff of horseshit to me. Surely we’re all prone to addiction? We’re all addicted to chemical highs – it’s how nature rewards us for living our lives well. It’s not an aberration that needs to be fixed or circumvented; it’s fundamental to our nature.
Substance addiction comes about when our lives aren’t giving us the chemical highs we’re all naturally addicted to. Think of the homeless living on the street, hard pressed to feed themselves yet becoming addicted to drugs while they’re down that low. People reach out to nicotine, alcohol, food, hard drugs or even exercising, fornicating or tanning to excess when their lives aren’t providing them with the natural highs that we’re all programmed to need.
And it seems to me that relying on will power and self-control to beat these addictions is a stupid way to go. It doesn’t fix the problem. If you can make it work at all it’s merely a long, hard road to fixing a symptom.
By all means have a New Year’s Resolution this year and good luck with it. But a January 2nd resolution is just as good as a January 1st one. One that fixes the hole in your life rather than what you’re plugging it with would be infinitely better though.