Why Do We Make Resolutions?

I believe we are always doing the best we can. I call this our I-M. This is who I am and I Matter. Our I-M is always adapting to Four Domains. Our Home Domain, our Social Domain, our Biological Domain of our brain and body, and our Ic Domain or how I see myself and how I think other people see me. Using the I-M lens there is no pathology. There is only our I-M, doing the best we can at this moment in time, adapting to a shift in any of the Domains to another I-M.

The I-M Approach

Source: Joseph Shrand, MD

It’s the New Year, a time when we reflect on the last year, often judge ourselves, and then make a resolution to change. The word “resolution” itself suggests we need a new approach. The old solution didn’t work so we redo it, we make a re-solution, and re-solve the problem. Ultimately, a resolution is a choice to do something that ultimately increases your value in any of the four Domains.

Do any of these apply to you? I resolve to lose weight. I resolve to get a better job. I resolve to be a better person. I resolve to save more money and not spend so frivolously. I resolve to not drink. I resolve to stop buying lottery tickets.

A re-solution is a promise to ourselves now about something you plan to achieve in the future. The promise may be based on an emotional limbic need, often based in an Ic of being less-than and wanting to be better, like to lose weight. But the execution of that promise takes planning, based on a different part of your brain right behind your forehead called the pre-frontal cortex. As the outcome may not be immediate, planning often takes an ability to delay gratification.

In some ways making a resolution is the marshmallow test all over again [1]. Children were shown a marshmallow. They could eat it now or wait five minutes and then be given another marshmallow, and then eat both of them. Which person are you?

The Marshmallow Test

Source: Flickr

Making a New Year’s Resolution is like a response to all those times you could not wait and ate the marshmallow: when you were limbic and impulsive instead of pre-frontal and thoughtful, anticipating the consequence of your action. I make a resolution to go the gym and get in shape, to make my body healthier and create a biological Domain that can achieve the goals I want to in the Home and Social Domains, and in so doing enhance my Ic and the way I see myself and the way others see me.

Last night, a friend of my son’s came over to the house who I had first met when they were both in elementary school almost twenty years ago. We had not seen each other in years and the first thing he said, the very first thing, was how great I looked and how much weight I had lost.

But what he did not know that if he had seen me two months ago I would have been even thinner. My resolve had waned, and the re solution I had to losing weight had reverted slightly to putting it back on. My limbic system had been activated in part due to some life changes that caused me to regress to a familiar but really not comfortable strategy. Under stress, I ate. Not salads but fatty foods, which part of my truly ancient brain had activated believing the stress was the result of an impending famine. My limbic brain harnessed the planning ability of my prefrontal cortex, and ate some extra carbs so I could survive the anticipated potentially difficult new and uncharted social domain I was about to enter.

I had forgotten to follow my own advice in the blog, "A Simple Technique to Manage Anxiety."

So that is why we make resolutions. Because on a deep and profound level, we see ourselves as not doing as well as we could, and should be doing better. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change your I-M if you don’t like it. But the risk we have is unwittingly, limbically creating stress just because we think we should change, as if we were not doing well enough to begin with.

But when we see this as an I-M, we can step back and re-spect, again look, at why we made the resolution in the first place. Because we want something to change. This year when I make my resolutions I am using the I-M Approach as a Road Map. What small change do I want to make in any of the Domains to reach my goal? One of them is to lose that weight again. So I am going to re-read and implement The i-Diet, by Susan Roberts.

I am starting a new job so another small change will be to walk our new dog every morning and think about the things I want to achieve.

And my last resolution is to wait at least five minutes every time I am faced with a marshmallow test in disguise.

But here is one re-solution you can make which will have an immediate effect. Every day, say something nice to someone and remind them of their value. If you buy something from someone say "Thank You" and observe what happens next. I will start: Thank you for reading this blog. You have made me feel valued, and influenced my I-M.

Re-solved.