Ways of avoiding ‘false hope syndrome’ for your 2026 resolutions: psychologist

With making it to the halfway mark in January, are people following through on their resolutions? Registered psychologist Joan Neehall shares her insight.

How come so many people fail at reaching their New Year’s resolutions? Registered psychologist Joan Neehall joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton’s Kent Morrison with advice on having healthy resolutions.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Why do people feel the need on the first of January to reset and list a bunch of goals for themselves?

Joan Neehall: The new year provides us with a fresh start, an ability to separate the old us from the new us or the new person that we’re going to be. Look, societal pressure causes us to make resolutions, and very often people feel like they should, whether they’re ready to do it or not. The problem with resolutions is that once you make the resolution, you get a rush of dopamine. You feel good about yourself and are filled with this “false hope syndrome,” as we call it in psychology. People tend to underestimate the difficulty of the task at hand and to overestimate their future willpower. We need to look at why these resolutions don’t work.

Kent: Why do they seem to always fail and fail pretty quickly, like, by February?

Joan: You’re right, 80 per cent of resolutions will fail by mid-February. First of all, if the resolutions are built on vague goals like, “I want to be happy, I want to exercise,” they aren’t going to work. Make them specific, time-limited, and have some way that we can evaluate them. In other words, they’ve got to be a resolution that resonates with who I am at my core.

Secondly, resolutions that are built on motivation and not on behavioural science will fail. The problem isn’t resolutions, as we commonly think. Rather, it’s the way the resolutions are made. People try to change too much at once, and they fail to look at habits. Our behaviours are largely automatic, not a conscious decision.

Kent: What are your keys to success? If people want to set healthy goals that they can achieve or that they can at least work towards. What’s your advice?

Joan: Let’s look at six evidence-based strategies. The first one is instead of saying what you want to do, decide when and where, so you don’t have decision fatigue. For instance, it’s 7 a.m. on a weekday and you’re going to go for a walk.

Secondly, convert your resolution into embarrassingly small steps – I really mean small steps – so that they can become a habit. Philippa Lally talks about the fact that consistency trumps intensity. “I’m going to do this for 10 minutes every day,” versus “I’m going to do it for one hour intensely.” That will be done barely. The other bit of good news is that once you convert it into a habit, it becomes automatic in three months. Think about it. It’s like putting on your jacket. You don’t think about it anymore. You just do it, but you have to track it every day and, at the end of the week, reward yourself for a job well done. Look at what you’ve been able to do, not how much is left in the future to do. Adopt the growth mindset now.

Carol Dweck developed that at Stanford University. It means that when we’re starting a new skill or a new habit – yours might be being on top of your schedule – you’ve got to expect setbacks along the way, but that doesn’t make us a failure. What that tells me is, “OK, this is valuable feedback. This is where I need to change now.” We’re going to be flexible. We’re not going to suffer from rigor mortis yet.

The next thing we need to do is to think in terms of stacking one habit onto an existing one. Say you want to increase your reading at night. For instance, “I’m going to read for five minutes before bedtime.” If it’s nutrition, “I’m going to add more fruit into my diet,” not, “I’m never going to have sugar again.” We all like instant gratification. Let’s have some fun in the process.