Permission NOT to be ready - say no to the New Year’s Resolution?

This new year, perhaps you or someone you care about might be considering making a lifestyle change toward better health? What would you think if I suggested that you might be more likely to make that change if you gave yourself permission NOT to do it. Basically, by considering a health behaviour change, your reasons to do it or not to do it, comparing them to your own values and what is important to you, and then providing yourself the opportunity to not be ready, you might actually be more likely to make positive changes.

I learned this concept from health psychologist Dr. Michael Vallis, who recommends that before setting a behaviour change goal, give yourself “permission not to be ready”, to maximize your chances of success.

There are some interesting psychological principles underlying the “permission not to be ready” concept.

1. Psychological Reactance:

   • Often the first word a child speaks is NO! or No, me do! Humans have an innate desire for autonomy and self determination. The more we are told that we “should” do something, by others or ourselves, we resist. This resistance can be disarmed, by simply recognizing personal choice and by saying “it’s okay if you don’t want to do this”.

2. Learned Helplessness:

   • People usually already understand this phenomenon - if an individual has failed to reach a goal multiple times in the past, their confidence to reach that goal goes down, and they lose motivation to try in the future. Setting new years resolutions in ways that are too lofty or don’t take into consideration potential barriers to change, can lead to learned helplessness.

   • When an individual has low confidence because of past failures, providing them “permission not to be ready” in that moment can open the door to discussions around confidence, and how treatments or goals can be modified to maximize confidence before initiating behaviour change techniques.

3. Get to the Magic/ Learned Optimism:

   • Something magical happens when you perform a behaviour 5-15 times, your confidence shoots up and you experience the “I got this” moment. Allowing an individual the chance to be not be ready (at least not quite yet anyways…) can be an opportunity to explore more treatments, more support options, or more starting points for your journey that set you up so you get to that ‘magic’ moment of confidence and self identity as soon as possible.

   • In a sense, there is an opposite to learned helplessness - when one sets goals in a smart way, you can experience learned optimism.

4. Resolutions may come and go, but Values are life long:

   • Perhaps more important than confidence to achieve a goal, is whether a goal is relevant or important to you at all. Providing an individual permission not be ready, can be a starting conversation for sharpening an individual’s personal values around health. The more a resolution is aligned with a person’s deeper sense of what is important in life, the more willing that person will be to make sacrifices toward those values.

   • Goals come and go, but Values never die.

In my experience, there can be skepticism around this idea of not setting goals if you are not feeling a high level of confidence or importance. I invite you to try it out before judging it. Permission not to be ready is not a ‘head in the sand’ approach - it is a ‘keep the conversation going’ approach. If you keep the ‘change talk’ going in your mind (should I….shouldn’t I…) but at the end of it all, just allow yourself to not be ready, you might notice that change initiates naturally, without having to push yourself. Maybe your confidence can build without you ever having to ‘should’ yourself or dread failing? That sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it?

Happy New Year!

DrO