Gretchen Rubin* says whether your New Year’s resolutions worked for you or not depends on whether you made the right choices for your personality profile.
How are your New Year’s resolutions going? Not so good in many cases I would guess.
So many people get discouraged when they fail to keep them.
When making them we often get advice about what we should try — but it’s also useful to think about what we should not try.
We’re all different, and different strategies work for different people.
It’s helpful to be able to identify, and then eliminate from consideration, strategies that probably won’t work for us.
Often, we try to do something the ‘best’ way, or the ‘right’ way, or try to force ourselves to adopt a system that works well for someone else.
There’s no magical, one-size-fits-all-solution for good habits or happiness.
Consider these points as they pertain to you:
Consider my Four Tendencies personality profile, and whether you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel.
The Four Tendencies is a framework I developed to help you identify your personality profile, based on how you respond to expectations.
Knowing your tendency reveals how to make your life better (and other people’s lives better, too).
Our tendency shapes every aspect of our behaviour, so understanding this framework lets us make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress and burnout, and engage more effectively.
The Four Tendencies explain why we act and why we don’t act.
So what tends NOT to work for each Tendency?
Upholders have less success when it’s not clear what’s expected, or when the rules are ambiguous.
They can get anxious if they think they might be doing something ‘wrong’ or if they’re entering a situation where they don’t know how to behave properly.
Questioners have less success when they don’t understand exactly how or why they’re doing something in a particular way.
If they’re not utterly convinced by an approach to healthy eating, say, or a fitness regimen, they can stall out.
They need to think: “I’m following the most efficient, well-justified course of action, and I’ve customised it exactly to fit my needs.”
Obligers need outer accountability. It’s that simple. Not motivation, self-care, priorities, clarity, or purpose.
They will not succeed if they do not have outer accountability.
This could be supervision, deadlines, monitoring, and consequences enforced from the outside such as a penalty for late work.
Rebels have less success when they feel trapped, controlled, or chained.
They tend to resist to-do lists, scheduling, oversight, check-ins, and any situation where someone is telling them what to do.
There are always exceptions, because Rebels can do anything they want to do, but often those factors hurt their chances of achieving their aims.
As you think back on your own experiences with good habits, bad habits, and New Year’s resolutions, what hasn’t worked for you — and why?
Because of course, when we figure out what doesn’t work, it’s much easier to figure out what to try.
As you’re thinking about possible resolutions, reflect on your past.
Looking back, was there a time when you had trouble keeping this resolution? Or when you did manage to keep it?
The past holds important clues for the present — about how you might set yourself up for success in the future.
We can all achieve our aims, but we all must do it in the way that’s right for us.
*Gretchen Rubin is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home. She writes about happiness and habit-formation. She can be followed on Twitter @gretchenrubin.
This article first appeared at gretchenrubin.com.
