Why don't New Year's resolutions work... for me?

It used to be that resolutions were “in” insofar as they were the traditional thing to do with the arrival of the New Year. The usual suspects include: “This is the year that things are going to change for me;” or how about “I'm going to exercise more regularly, make healthier food choices and let go of some of the stress.” In the last couple of years I've heard people complain that they don't make New Year's resolutions anymore because they never keep them.

You want to do something though. Who doesn't want to break old patterns and experience growth and improvement in their life? But what can you do that really works? And why is it that sometimes, even though we want to create change, we just can't seem to, and even if we do it doesn't seem to last?

The sad fact is we live in a culture that doesn't support staying connected and in tune with our physiology and our internal cues. Conversely, it supports a perpetual state of stress physiology. I find it ironic that while healthy habits are good defenses against the ill effects of stress, it's the stress itself that increases the likelihood that we won't participate in them. Why?

Physiologically speaking, if you are stressed, the blood supply to the higher brain is diminished rendering it less accessible. Functions associated with this part of the brain include love, creativity, understanding, self-reflection and the ability to consciously alter behavior based upon it. If the functions of your higher brain are inhibited by a stress physiology, it stands to reason that your ability to follow through with your goals or resolutions will be compromised.

Our degree of wellness is closely linked with our physiology and our ability to adapt our behavior in response to new information. On his Lifetime Wellness CD series, Dr. Donald Epstein states that “People don't get well from making healthier lifestyle choices; people who are experiencing wellness will make healthier life choices because they are well.” Based on this statement, the inability to initiate and adopt healthy lifestyle choices would indicate, at least to some degree, a lack of wellness.

Logic dictates that if we want to create changes in our lives and make different choices, it behooves us to incorporate methods that enhance wellness. Then, if we wanted to make a resolution, we would have a better chance of actually achieving our goals. And if we didn't want to, those changes might just occur anyway.