Patience: The Missing Link in Your New Year’s Resolutions

Changing Habits for New Year’s Resolutions

We all know the feeling that comes at the close of one year with the dawn of a new year. We tell ourselves, this will be the year that I finally…start exercising regularly, write in my journal, stick to my budget, stop yelling at my kids…whatever it might be. From past experience we know that changing ourselves – our thoughts, our behaviors, our relationships – is hard.  

Change requires new habits and changing our habits takes practice, but it is possible to change, even if change is hard. A study out of Ohio State University found that only 9% of people who set New Year’s resolutions actually achieve them. Why is this the case, and what can we do about it?  One answer is that we give up when things get frustrating.  We lose patience with ourselves, so cultivating patience might be just the hack we need for success.

Most of us know this cycle —we dream, set new goals, become discouraged and lose motivation, and then stop trying. Our brains want to fall back into familiar patterns that feel safe and comfortable. New habits come with mental hurdles.

Setting Goals and Creating a Plan

Before we can even implement the seeds of change, it requires mental effort to:

1. decide the goals and
2. create a plan to see them achieved.

Modify Your Mindset to overcome Mental Hurdles

Of course, this planning is a pretty daunting project. I feel my own overwhelm coming on just describing it. Each of us already carries a big mental load, and the effort of adding or changing habits is taxing. We can talk ourselves out of trying to change by thinking that only certain personality types are able to achieve success. While it might be true that certain personality types find it easier to change, any significant change requires effort, so every human is susceptible to overextension and burnout. No matter the personality type, any real change requires daily effort and mental energy (not the most exciting news!).

Wouldn’t it been nice if we could maintain that feeling that comes with the dawn of a new year. It’s invigorating, filled with fresh motivation, the vision of endless possibilities, and new hope for what our lives could be like in the new year. We all innately have a desire to grow and improve our lives, learning new skills and venturing out of comfort zones to experience more of what life has to offer.

How does cultivating patience help us achieve our goals?

In our culture of instant gratification where everyone peddles the perfect plan and product, what few people are peddling is patience. We probably most freely associate patience with relationships, but applying it to other areas of our lives, such as the efforts required for change, is just as much an application for this virtue as any other.

Patience, in a way, is a manifestation of grace, or self-compassion. Allowing ourselves room to fail, speaking kindly to ourselves to get back on track, and knowing the journey will take longer than we want, are all ways that we can extend compassion to ourselves. No one extends more grace to us than God, our loving source, and if we are the recipients of this boundless grace from an outside source, it isn’t crazy to think we can also extend grace to ourselves. The reality is that we exist within the frailties of a human body and mind in an imperfect world, with more than just a singular goal to focus on. 

Let’s meditate on this thought of patience as we walk through our days, through our lives, recognizing in advance that the road could be longer than we’d like, but that ultimately, no matter the goal, cultivating more patience in our lives improves the quality of the journey, which might even end up being our favorite part.

Remember that goals are a point in the distant or somewhat distant future. They require a journey. This is why adding patience to the framework of our goals can make success more likely and even more enjoyable. 

Questions for cultivating patience for the journey to our goals? 

Imagining a future desired response can help pave new pathways for our brains and emotions to follow. It can help us replace undesirable reactions (impatience, discomfort, lack of motivation, etc…) with our desired responses. 

• If you have a goal in mind, write it down on a sheet of paper and describe it in a couple of sentences. 
• Why is this goal important to you? Explain with a couple of sentences.
• In an ideal world, when would you like to see this goal achieved?
• Imagine yourself on the journey to this goal, doing your best to implement your strategies. Then, you experience a setback that affects your desired timeline. Envision what your reaction might be (discouragement, frustration, shame, disappointment, anger, defeat). Think about what your body would feel as you experience this response (tense, heavy, a pit in your stomach, headache).
• Sit with those feelings, exploring them in your mind.
• Now, imagine applying a patient response to this setback. How would you like to see yourself respond (with love, self-acceptance, compassion, curiosity, perseverance, gratitude)? (Perhaps considering how you would counsel someone else to respond to a setback could give you insight here.) 
• Envision yourself responding in your ideal way. What do you feel in your body as you initiate this response (peace, relaxation, lightheartedness)?
• Fully embrace this moment, allowing yourself to reflect back on it the next time you have an opportunity to extend patience to yourself and your situation.

Further reading:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

WAIT: Understanding and Practicing Patience