Holistic Athlete Weekly Newsletter

New Year’s Resolutions - 3 Levels of Behavioral Change

Happy New Year! While time is fairly arbitrary, the Earth making its way all the way around the sun gives us an opportunity to assess, evaluate, and reflect on the past year. As we identify aspects of our life that are in our control that we’d like to improve, it’s important to take a couple things into consideration:

1. New Year’s resolutions rarely stick. About 1/3 of Americans report giving up on their resolutions prior to January 7th. Part of the reason for this is due to the external nature of making the resolutions in the first place. “I’ll start on Monday,” or “In 2025 I’m going to…” is leaning on the concept of a fresh start to begin or stop a behavior. In reality, if it was something you were internally motivated to do, that you’d get inherent satisfaction from, or something that meant a great deal to you, you wouldn’t need a changing of a calendar to make the adjustment.

2. Many resolutions are behavior-focused, but fail to address emotional and mental health obstacles, and general barriers that have historically gotten in the way. For example, if you’d like to improve your physical health in 2025, and you make a resolution to go to the gym more often, are you addressing the reasons you haven’t been doing so to this point? It’s unlikely that you didn’t care at all about your health in 2024, so what prevented you from addressing it in the past year? Behavioral plans without a consideration of obstacles and challenges is more of a wish than a plan.

There are 3 levels of behavioral changes:

1. Motivation. That would be ideal, but motivation is fleeting. When you sit down to make your New Year’s Resolutions, you may feel more motivated in that moment than you will at any other time throughout the year. Motivation is nice, but we can’t depend on it.

2. In times when we’re not motivated, we want to fall back on our discipline. How can we create systems and routines that make it as easy as possible to follow through with behaviors? Consistency with scheduling, reduced friction (if you’re trying to not eat cookies, don’t have cookies in the house), and taking care of your mental health helps with discipline.

3. If we don’t have motivation or discipline, we want to create a safety net of accountability. If you want to go to the gym at 6am every day, but when your alarm wakes you up at 5:30 and you don’t want to get up, and you haven’t been doing this consistently yet, having a friend knocking on your door at 5:55 may be the catalyst you need. Involve your social support with your goals. Have people you need to answer to if you don’t follow through.

AJ Brown Reads on the Sideline

As the importance of mental health and performance continues to become evident, with more discussion and awareness on the topic, we are starting to see athletes explore more ways to reset and control their emotions during games.

AJ Brown is a Pro Bowl Wide Receiver for the Eagles who has signed multiple $100M contracts in his NFL Career. Last night in their playoff game, after a frustrating drive didn’t result in points, he was seen on the sideline reading Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy. After the game, he says its a way for him to reset and remind himself of important passages that could help direct his focus to aspects of his performance that are in his control, including his response to adversity.

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