How to Harness the Power of Fresh Starts

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After what seemed like a very long year, I think many of us are ready for a fresh start.

The benefit of a new year is that it feels like we’re given another chance to try again. Maybe we didn’t accomplish something we had set out to do last year. Maybe we regret not trying something new. Maybe we just didn’t get quite as far as we wanted to go. Whatever went wrong last year or however we fell short, we can put it behind us. That was last year. Now it’s a brand new year. And this year, things are going to be different.

At least that’s how it usually feels during the first few weeks in January when we make our resolutions and set our intentions for the year. Our renewed sense of hope inspires us to aim high. Maybe too high.

We’re notoriously bad at keeping New Year’s resolutions. One study that tracked people’s progress on their New Year’s resolutions found that only one out of five participants kept their resolutions long term. And, yet, we keep making them year after year. The allure of a fresh start is that strong.

So, how can we make the most of this motivational boost that comes with the new year while avoiding the common pitfalls associated with resolutions? The key is to remember why fresh starts are so enticing: They’re temporary. At some point, the blank slate will cease to be blank. That’s why it feels so urgent: If we don’t take advantage of it now, we’ll miss it. The short-lived nature of the blank slate gives us a temporary motivational boost, which has both benefits and drawbacks depending on what we do with it.

Here are three strategies to help you take advantage of the temporary motivational boost—without letting it take advantage of you:

Beware of setting goals that require you to maintain your current level of motivation.

This renewed sense of hope inspires us to aim high. And this is one way we often go wrong. We set goals and intentions that will only work if we can maintain our current high level of motivation throughout the whole year. So, when our motivation inevitably wanes after a few weeks, we can’t keep up with our goals. If we account for our waning motivation when setting our goals, however, we can set more realistic ones.

Your motivation will fade; plan for it. Set your goals based on how motivated you’ll feel tomorrow, not how you motivated you feel today.

Capitalize on the motivational boost to tackle one-time actions.

The fleeting motivational boost from the fresh start of the new year can make it difficult to set realistic goals to pursue for a whole year, but it can be great for helping us to do one-time actions that require high motivation.

Take advantage of your short-term surge in enthusiasm by tackling a few of the important one-time tasks you had a hard time getting to last year. Set up that first therapy session. Make an appointment with a financial advisor. Schedule that overdue colonoscopy.

Take advantage of the natural urge to reflect on your life.

In the busyness and hustle of trying to stay on top of our daily obligations, we don’t always take sufficient time to reflect at a deeper level. One of the benefits of fresh starts is that they can lead us to think bigger picture about our lives. This makes the new year an ideal time to think about how things are going and what kinds of changes you’d like to make in your life.

So, even if you don’t want to make a New Year’s resolution, you can still benefit from the natural inclination to reflect on your life. Just remember: It won’t last.

© Jen Zamzow, Ph.D., 2024