Don’t give up on your new year run resolution
Resolve to keep up your new year resolution, even when you stumble
FALLEN OFF the workout wagon? You’re not alone. BUPA research shows that 80 per cent of people who break a new year resolution do so within three months. But viewing it as merely a blip, not an outright failure, will help get you back on track, according to psychotherapist Richard O’connor, author of Rewire:
Change your Brain to Break Bad Habits (Plume Books). ‘When we’re trying to form a new habit like eating right or exercising, we can easily be discouraged by a bad day,’ he says. ‘We can give up and feel we’ve wasted a lot of effort – but that’s not the case. All the days you successfully managed more constructive behaviour leave traces in the brain.’ And that, says O’connor, makes getting back on track easier. A study from University College London bears him out. It followed 100 people as they tried to form new habits and found no long-term consequences from the occasional slip-up.