While a new secular year and a new Jewish year have some significant differences (you don’t drink champagne in synagogue, and there’s no sermon to listen to on December 31st), there’s one strong commonality between the two: resolutions. And while losing weight or exercising are the most common resolutions made on January 1st, trying to be a “good person” is third — which is something many of us think about over both the secular and Jewish new year.
Even more importantly, just like we say the same words on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to ask forgiveness for our failings over the past year, many of us will not follow through on our resolutions for 2016. And in fact, we’re probably just as likely to fail at our resolutions to be kinder or more present for our loved ones as we are to plan to go to the gym every day and skip dessert.
So how can we be a better person this year than we were last year? Are there ways we can be more effective in terms of resolutions?
It’s a little bit like the “Seinfeld” episode where Jerry wants to make a reservation for a rental car. The agent had made the reservation, but had run out of cars. When Jerry says that the point of the reservation is guaranteeing the car will be there, the agent testily responds that he “thinks [he] know[s] why we have reservations.”
“I don’t think you do,” Jerry answers. “You see, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.”
Similarly, we know how to make a new year’s resolution, we just don’t know how to keep a resolution. And that’s the most important part of the resolution: the keeping. Anybody can just make them.
So what do we do? Well, what we’re really trying to do is change our behavior, and to make it stick. But willpower is finite, exhaustible and fickle. What we should do instead is focus on our environment.
That’s what management consultant Peter Bregman suggests: