Why Last Year's Failed Resolutions Can Be a Path to Success

We emphasize our ability to keep the New Year’s resolutions we make to the point where keeping them indicates success, and falling short constitutes failure. What do we do with our “failures?” Do we disregard ever having resolved to do something differently? Do we forget those commitments until the next year when we may make them again? Or do we look at how and why we failed in the previous year to keep the promises we made to ourselves?

Exploring Limits and Obstacles

Success or failure cannot be simply defined. Success often involves taking risks or pushing ourselves past an established state, yet the possibility of failure is ever-present. Failure is the recognition that we have pushed ourselves beyond our limits. A willingness to accept failure provides us with useful information for learning. Looking at how or why we failed can enable us to grow and may be the key to achieving our goals.

Nevertheless, learning from failure can be difficult given its various emotional and cognitive barriers (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022). Although failure contains useful information, it is ego-threatening, so we may evade examining what our failure is attempting to tell us. Moreover, the information in failure is difficult to extract (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022). For example, the shame experienced with failure may obscure lessons learned. Thus, failing to achieve the goals we may set may have consequences for our sense of ourselves. Rather than pursue what we can learn from failure, we may evade recognizing and exploring the experience.

Researchers have found that when people fail, they tend to stop paying attention, which compromises recall and makes learning nearly impossible. (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022). For example, if a person who fails infers that they will not succeed, it can undermine their perceived commitment since negative feedback may lower their confidence that their goal can be achieved (Atkinson, 1964; Bandura & Cervone, 1983; Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022). If we disengage from failure and, in response, retreat or develop an inflated self-view, we have a harder time learning from our errors (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2022; Liu et al., 2021).

The Regret of Failure

Regret can help us learn from past mistakes and correct our future behavior (Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2007). However, we have to tolerate feeling its effects as we take a look at its meaning. The experience of regret results from blending shame with fear and distress. In the case of regret, shame is triggered by an awareness of one’s action or inaction, which is accompanied by a fear of punishment for the behavior and distress produced by shame's constancy (Nathanson, 1992). The emotions producing regret are repeatedly activated, so it is difficult to rid ourselves of the thoughts associated with it, such as obsessing about the neglect of the resolution we made last year and its consequences. It’s no wonder that we try to forget about the promises we make to ourselves that we do not keep.

Despite how negative regret may feel, it represents internal feedback about performance and serves an important self-supervisorial function. Taking a look at one’s performance may not necessarily influence future behavior, but retrospective assessment certainly has the potential to provide a learning experience. According to cognitive scientists, the orbitofrontal cortex—a region in the frontal lobes of the brain—plays a fundamental role in mediating experiences of regret (Camille, et al., 2004). The cognitive process, known as counterfactual thinking, has to do with our assessment of what was gained compared to what would have been gained had we made a different decision (Zeelenberg, et al., 1998). Researchers found that people with orbitofrontal cortical lesions do not anticipate the negative consequences of their choices and do not report regret, and normal subjects chose to minimize future regret and learned from their emotional experience involved with their counterfactual thinking. Perhaps we can pay more attention to failed promises to ourselves and use the motivation regret provides to continue our efforts.

Reflecting On Our Future Self

We can use our imagination to be the future version of ourselves, with all the cognitions and emotions we will have, to give the present version of ourselves motivation to make decisions our future self would want (J. L. Parris, personal communication, 11/27/22). For example, suppose you resolve to drink less on weekdays. If faced with what feels like an overwhelming temptation to have a drink, we can imagine the future version of ourselves looking back on the decision we are about to make—specifically, looking back on giving into the temptation or not—and use the way we think about and feel about the decision to generate motivation.

Using the future self in this way can be a powerful tool for making better decisions. One reason is that it allows us to tap into the motivation that comes from wishing we could improve the past. We also benefit from the long-term perspective that our imagination can provide when we extrapolate into the future; when we imagine a future version of ourselves, we can see the potential consequences or benefits of our actions and be motivated to make choices to avoid those consequences or obtain those benefits. When faced with a temptation, it can be easy to focus on short-term pleasure without considering the long-term consequences. By imagining ourselves as the future version of ourselves, we can see the long-term impact of our decisions based on our choices.

Succeeding in the Face of Failure

Failure is a natural part of learning, which involves being open to criticism and profiting from our mistakes. We need to be willing to take risks and challenge ourselves. Ultimately, succeeding in the face of failure can provide a sense of accomplishment and pride. There’s nothing sweeter than succeeding in an arena where we previously could not. Moreover, when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, it’s just between us and ourselves.

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Excerpted in part from my book, What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); My appreciation to Dr. Julian Parris for his comments regarding this post.