Stossel: New Year's Resolutions

N E W  Y OR K,  Dec. 29, 2000 -- Stop smoking, lose 30 pounds, and while you’re at it, become a better person. Every year we set forth a new set of New Year’s resolutions with the best intentions of following through. And every year the majority of those resolutions fail.

“One in four resolutions bites the dust within a week. About half of them are gone within a month,” says Steve Levinson, co-author of the book Following Through.

In his research Levinson illustrates that six months into the year, most resolutions are dead. “They are history. They are toast.”

So why bother making New Year’s resolutions at all? This phenomenon of failure prompts John Stossel of ABCNEWS’ 20/20 to say, “Give Me a Break!”

Were New Year’s resolutions a marketing scheme dreamed up by a health club executive? Not so. New Year’s resolutions actually date back to ancient times. There is evidence there was a tradition of resolutions in Babylon, ancient Greece and Rome.

In today’s health-conscious world, the two predominant resolutions are to stop smoking and to get more exercise.

“January is absolutely a major month for the club industry,” says Bill Howland, the public relations director of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association.

“Helping people follow through on New Year’s resolutions is a big part of what club people are going to be thinking about right now,” said Howland. He says sports clubs do 10 percent to 15 percent of their initiation business around New Year’s.

But despite the best efforts of personal trainers, after most gyms swell to capacity in January, there is a sharp dropoff in February. And with all of the effort made toward quitting smoking, 97 percent of all people who try to quit wind up smoking again.

Why are we so inept at keeping our resolutions? Levinson and Following Through co-author Peter Greider believe it has to do with our approach to self-help in general. They argue that while our brain makes decisions based on logic, it is much more difficult to train our bodies to behave in a logical fashion. According to Levinson and Greider, a New Year’s resolution is an attempt to impose a logical strategy on behavior, which does not follow the same pattern.

Consequently, human beings are always vulnerable to New Year’s resolutions and the thriving self-help industry. “We are suckers for New Year’s resolutions. We are suckers for motivational speeches, Sunday morning sermons, diet books and self-improvement articles in magazines,” says Greider.

‘Oops …, I Did It Again’The problem is only exacerbated by all of the hype surrounding celebrities who make New Year’s resolutions. Celebrity Web sites and entertainment shows always popularize resolutions around New Year’s, but they never seem to track the success of the resolutions.

Stossel found that celebrities are no better than the rest of us when it comes to resolutions. The success stories turned out to be the noteworthy exceptions. Soap opera actress Susan Lucci made good on her resolution to study voice, and it paid off as she starred in a Broadway musical.

Tom Hanks did not keep his resolution to take pilates, an exercise program, and Danny Glover did not learn to speak French, as he had promised. Most of the resolutions made by celebrities were found to be empty promises when laid bare — just like Britney Spears’ stomach. Last January the teen pop star had vowed not to show off her midriff while performing. Shortly after stripping down to a bikini top at the MTV Video Music Awards, she appropriately boomed her latest hit, “Oops … I Did It Again.”

You Say You Want a ResolutionSo how can we make resolutions that we will have a realistic chance of keeping?

According to Levinson and Greider, the general rule of resolutions is that if you make a lot, you will break a lot. They say we need to be very particular about our resolutions in order to have a chance of succeeding. “We don’t need to throw resolutions out the window. But we do need to be much more selective about adopting them. We need to be much more careful,” says Levinson.

Levinson even compares a resolution to a spouse. “Think about a resolution being like a marriage partner,” he says. “You don’t just marry the first prospect that you come across. You’re careful, you date. You check things out.”

Once you carefully choose your resolution, the next important step is to follow through. Levinson and Greider suggest many strategies to keeping resolutions, from a personal beeping device to a daily e-mail reminder from one of the resolution Web sites. The basic idea is that you need to train your body and mind to enjoy the keeping of the resolution in order to make it work.

So this year make a realistic resolution, and work hard on the follow through. And if your friend comes to you with a list of 30 outrageous promises, remember what Stossel would say.