The curse of a "clean slate." What prevents us from fulfilling our New Year's resolutions

The festive reset easily pushes us toward New Year's resolutions. As we wrote earlier, the plan to become an effective investor and double your income will have to be put into practice at some point. But almost immediately, our commitments cease to be a source of motivation and begin to weigh on us — every glance at the market or banking app increases our stress. The reason is not weak willpower, but how the brain works and the cognitive traps we create for ourselves.

The significance and driving force behind New Year's resolutions often fade away by February, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2002. About 25% of people give up in the first week after the holidays, and by midwinter, almost half of those who promised to start a new life or act differently have "dropped out." This February slump is a natural psychological reaction.

One of the main reasons why promises begin to weigh on us and seem burdensome is False Hope Syndrome, described by psychologists Janet Polivi and Peter Herman. The essence of this syndrome is that the very act of making a promise is, in essence, an act of making a significant decision. For example, "Starting this year, I will invest 30% of my monthly income" causes an immediate release of dopamine, the hormone of joy. At that moment, we already feel like winners — the decision has been made, even though we haven't actually done anything yet. Our brain, and we along with it, confuses the pleasant feeling of making a decision with the actual process of behavioral change. Remember that for commitments to be successful, they must be formulated primarily in terms of behavior.

When we return to our daily routine after the holidays, it turns out that sorting through schedules and reports is not as fun as making promises to ourselves about a better life during the festive season. In other words, even if we enjoy investing on a daily basis, it is at least more difficult than enjoying Christmas and making a list of New Year's resolutions — there is noticeably less dopamine. This leads to a sharp drop in motivation. It is as if we are standing on the precipice between an imagined ideal and reality, which creates a feeling of depression.

Cognitive-behavioral psychology and therapy (CBT) often highlight a cognitive distortion known as black-and-white or dichotomous thinking. It is also referred to as "all-or-nothing" thinking. It has its own marker words that make it easy to spot: always–never, everyone–no one, everywhere–nowhere, and other "extreme" words. For example, "If I'm not successful in everything, then I'm a failure." I think many people can relate to this.

In the context of New Year's Resolutions, this mindset manifests itself through a phenomenon that researchers ironically call the What-the-Hell Effect. It works like this: if you promised yourself to strictly follow an investment strategy, but one day you slipped up or made a mistake, a voice in your head starts saying, "If I've already broken the plan, what's the point now? In the barn is burned, burn the house too!" This leads to a complete abandonment of the goal. We perceive any minor mistake not as a deviation from the course, but as a complete disaster. It is this expectation of perfect adherence to promises (everything and at once) that creates the unbearable pressure from which we want to escape.

Okay, we all make mistakes at some point in our lives, so why do we feel so bad about it, that is, when we don't follow through on our resolutions? The answer is provided by Edward Torrey Higgins' Self-Discrepancy Theory. He believes that each of us has three "selves." Of course, we're not talking about Billy Milligan and multiple personality disorder here, but about different images of the self:

New Year's resolutions and commitments are often formed from our current self with an eye toward our ideal self. This is natural because we want to become the best version of ourselves in our commitments. However, our ideal self is largely shaped by social media, "success stories," lucky colleagues, family expectations, and, let's not forget, our childhood and our attitude toward money. When our current self (a person who is tired after work and does not want to read company reports) does not correspond to our ideal self (an effective, cool investor), the cognitive dissonance familiar to many arises. This feeling expresses the discrepancy between different images of ourselves. This leads to feelings of guilt, anxiety, and, as a result, paralysis of will. It is a state in which it is difficult for us to make decisions.

As a result, we may even stop acting altogether. But this is not because we are lazy, but because it hurts us to face our own imperfections.

If you feel that your New Year's resolutions are becoming too difficult to keep, don't rush to throw them away. And don't rush to do anything. It's not about the goal, but about your attitude towards it. For this, we have cognitive restructuring, which we wrote about earlier. The main thing is to replace "I must" with "I want."

First, ask yourself: "Am I investing now because that's what successful people do? Because I'm afraid of losing a lot, or because it gives me a sense of satisfaction and security?" If your answer leans toward the first part of the question, then you are most likely doing it out of a sense of obligation.

Next, you can try practicing self-compassion: studies show that people who are able to forgive themselves for their mistakes achieve long-term goals more often than those who give up halfway through and then engage in self-flagellation. A mistake is simply part of the process, not a sentence.

You can also lower your expectations in line with the behavioral nature of New Year's resolutions: if the commitment feels overwhelming, change the wording without losing the meaning. Specifically, lower the level of abstraction: for example, instead of the less specific and more abstract "study the stock market every day," reduce it to "open the terminal for 1 minute a day and see what's going on." A small step does not cause resistance from the brain and does not create such pressure.

New Year's resolutions are, to some extent, an artificial tool. Your development as an investor actually happens primarily and mainly regardless of dates. It originates within a person, and it is a marathon, not a sprint — remember Warren Buffett, who, at almost 100 years old, still goes to the office every day. If plans seem unattainable at the moment, that is natural.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor