I once knew someone, let us call her Margaret, who had been trying to lose weight for many years, and then, just like that, she lost 40 pounds or so in the course of a single summer. I asked her what had happened.

“I finally decided to do it,” Margaret said. “I told myself one evening, ‘I am really going to lose the extra pounds,’ and for the first time, I believed what I was telling myself.’” “After that,” she went on, “it was easy.”

Margaret explained that while she had attempted to lose weight on multiple occasions previously, she never thought she would succeed. She wished she would and fantasized about what it would be like if she did but without conviction. She kept trying this method and that—diets, exercise routines, and so on—occasionally making progress toward her goal only to slide back shortly after. The target always remained out of reach, as if success did not depend on her. But that evening at the start of the summer when she lost weight, Margaret came to think that the path to victory had been open before her all along. Attaining the aim, she thought then, was chiefly a matter of decision.

There is a good deal to learn from Margaret’s case. Resolutions of various kinds are made only to be broken shortly after. Sometimes, we make them before the start of the New Year, hoping to draw some kind of power from the calendar, as though the new year self will be an improved version of the person we are, only to find, two weeks in, that we are just the person we were.

Or we may announce resolutions on social media in the hope the announcement might serve as a commitment device. If everyone knows we are trying, we will be embarrassed should we fail. But this doesn’t work either since, in all likelihood, most everyone on social media is just like us. So we know in advance........

© Psychology Today