Scientists think a psychological shift can help to achieve resolutions and
goals – and achieving them depends on when you start – and it’s not only on New
Year’s Day (Business Insider, December
9, 2015). The key to achieving goals is to start on ‘transition days’ – but
what are they and why are they the best days to start?
Researchers, led by Katherine Milkman at the Wharton School, found that
visits to a university fitness centre spiked around transition days – such as
birthdays, the beginning of semester, and the beginning of the week. To
follow-up these finding the researchers devised a new study, which included a
series of experiments (published in Psychological
Science in 2015).
One experiment involved asking participants to describe a goal they wanted
to pursue. Half of the participants were told to imagine that they had just
moved to a new apartment and it was their first house move in nine years. The
other half were told to imagine that they had just moved to a new apartment
after moving every year. All participants were asked to indicate how motivated
they would be to pursue their goal, and how different they felt from past
experiences in which they failed to achieve their goal.
The results showed that the participants who had to imagine that this was
the first move in nine years were more motivated to achieve the goal they had
described than participants who imagined moving every year.
Researchers determined that new experiences – called the ‘fresh-start
effect’ - motivated people to make progress towards their goals. These
fresh-starts or new beginnings act as prompts to tackle personal goals by
leaving the past behind and starting anew.
The fresh-start effect can happen at any transition days, not necessarily
at New Year. These transition days are times such as the first day of a new
job, first day of the month, first day of the week, your birthday, the loss of
a job, an accident, meeting a new friend, joining a club, a new semester, an
anniversary, the day it stops raining, and so on. Almost anything can be an
opportunity to use it as a transition day.
In summary, the psychological shift to perceiving a new beginning can give
people a boost to pursue goals that have been neglected, or to start new goals.
Researchers say that all you need to do is recognize an opportunity to try
again – there might be lots of fresh-start moments before a goal is realized,
and these transition days can be at any point during the year.
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