The Right New Year's Resolutions for Your Personality

What if the reason most people aren't able to keep their New Years Resolutions is because they choose the wrong resolutions? What if they choose the wrong resolutions for them, based on their personality traits? The Big Five personality traits are a very useful means of understanding yourself better. It's possible that knowing your own personality traits could help you play to your strengths and keep you from wasting time and energy on new habits or activities that just aren't a good fit for you.

The first step is to find out what your Big Five personality traits are. The best free online test is the IPIP-NEO, available here. I prefer the 120-item version, which will take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Once you have your scores (which range from 1 to 99) for each of the five traits, you can read below and start thinking about this year's resolutions. To start, I will discuss resolutions most appropriate to people who are HIGH in the various traits. So, when you examine your own scores, just identify your highest score (or two highest, if they are within 5 points of each other). In my next entry, I will discuss the LOW traits.

If your highest trait is conscientiousness, then...

Good news! Introducing new habits comes easy for you and you tend to have the self-discipline and perseverance needed to keep them going. Setting goals and working steadily towards them comes easy to you, so weight loss, fitness, healthier eating, and similar goals are less of a challenge to you than they are to others. You are probably the most likely person to set and to meet a goal of saving $2,000 in an emergency fund.

But maybe you've been focusing on the wrong type of resolutions? You work hard enough. Should your New Years Resolutions just be another form of work? Why not trying something that would be more challenging to you, but which might have more significant payoffs? Working out comes easy to you, but what about ... relaxing. Doing nothing. Recharging. Enjoying an abeyance of activity. What about making a resolution to take one full day off from work every week. No emails. No work-related reading. Nothing. Take an easy, casual stroll instead. Or just sit around and flip through magazines. Every day, try to take one hour in which there is no work being done. It's just leisure (so cooking dinner or repairing a door latch doesn't count). One hour a day, one day a week, and, if you can manage it, one week every three months. Relax.

If your highest trait is extraversion, then...

You probably have a lot of social and activity-oriented resolutions in mind: Travel more, host more parties, meet new people, try new restaurants, etc. Well, that's the stuff that comes easy to you, but it might not be want you really need to do. If the high conscientiousness folks need to practice some relaxation, maybe you could benefit from some peace and quiet. If you are go, go, go and talk, talk, talk during most of your waking hours, then maybe the best thing for you would be to slow down and do less. Try focusing on one or two relationships instead of managing a fleet of acquaintances. Instead of sharing your thoughts with friends over drinks, try writing them down in a journal that's for your eyes only. Cultivate a private, inner life, one unknown to the noisy crowd. Speak less; listen more. Set a goal of reading at least one book per month this year. Take it slow and quiet once in a while. If you feel yourself becoming bored, remember that boredom is the sign of an under-developed inner world.

If your highest trait is agreeableness, then...

You don't have to worry about making sure that you remember everyone's birthdays and anniversaries. It's OK to forgo a thank-you note or two. People will still like you and they will still think of you as a kind, thoughtful person, even if this year you experiment with doing more of what you want to do, and a little less of what you think you should do. Your first step is to think about what I want. Take a blank piece of paper and write I WANT... on the top and then fill in 20 items below it, as quickly as you can, without thinking too hard about what you are writing. Don't worry about writing something that is selfish, or inappropriate, or even shocking. Circle the top three items on that list and start working towards them. Doing this might require you to introduce a new phrase into your speech: Once a day, for a week straight, say, "I need..." to someone. As in, "I need you to move your car so I can pull out" or "I need you to pick up the kids because I've got to finish a project at work" or "I need you to pick what we watch on t.v. tonight because I feel like I've made enough decisions today." That's a lot more "I's" than you are used to saying, or than other people are used to hearing from you. But you know that old therapy saying about "putting on your own oxygen mask before helping other people with theirs"? That was invented for people like you. No one's asking you to stop caring about other people. We just want you to take care of yourself, too.

If your highest trait is openness to experience, then...

You're probably looking forward to travel, reading, new experiences (savoring life in a manner similar to that of the extravert). The concern is that chasing novelty for the sake of novelty can be a rather empty exercise. Think about people who travel a lot, going from country to country, for the sake of going from country to country. Some people just want to say that they have been to all 50 states, or to 100 countries, or atop the seven highest summits, or whatever. The problem is, I wonder if when they are on their fifth-highest summit if they are really there. Or if their thoughts are so consumed with the sixth and seventh summits that they are never really present for the fifth? Some people set goals of reading 50 books in a year, when they may have benefited more from re-reading 10 old books slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully. So, the challenge for the High Openness people is to be more present, more mindful, to practice appreciation of the beauty in their own neighborhoods. Look around you and savor the world in your own backyard. See old things with new eyes. Think about how many people in the world would do pretty much anything to change places with you: To live where you live, to eat what you eat, to know who you know, to do the work that you do.

If your highest trait is neuroticism, then...

You might be the most tempted by the lure of New Years Resolutions and the allure they hold of a fresh start and a new beginning—a new You! Well, here's my advice: You don't need a new You. You are enough, just the way you are. Instead of inventorying your flaws and foibles and failures, try accepting yourself. The universe is a vast, beautiful and perfect creation, and you are an essential part of it. You don't have to worry less, or be happier, or give up smoking, or be nicer to people. You just have to be who you really are. The developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner said that the essential ingredient in a child's life is that "somebody's gotta be crazy about that kid." Maybe you don't have someone in your life right now who is "crazy about you"; maybe you never did. If not, then you've got to be that person. You've got to be crazy about you. (If you're worried that following this advice might make you become a narcissist, I've got good news—real narcissists don't worry about becoming narcissists.) Most people would never tolerate other people saying to them the sort of nasty, biting, demoralizing things that they say secretly to themselves. For the next year, why not try easing up on yourself, being kind to yourself, and, paradoxically, creating the kind of accepting mindset in which true growth can happen.

Check out my next post for tips related to low scores on each of the Big Five traits.