People love making New Year's resolutions. It's all about rebirth. One year is ending, and another one is beginning. People want to follow suit, putting bad habits behind them and embracing newer, healthier habits and patterns of behavior in the new year.
There's nothing wrong with this. It's great to make positive changes in your life. If you can use a marking of the passage of time to lead you to bigger and better things, go ahead and make it happen.
Of course, the end of the year is not the only time people set goals for themselves. It happens every day. Some people seem to be addicted to setting goals. You may have a friend, as so many people do, that is always talking about the next thing they will undertake.
People like this often set many goals but achieve very few, if any, of them. How does this happen? Are all people hardwired this way? As a matter of fact, we are. You were built to set goals, but not so much to make them happen.
The Nature and Science Behind Why It Feels So Good to Set a Goal
You might feel a little better now about failing to achieve some goal after what you just read. The truth is that natural design will lead to more promises made than promises kept where goals are concerned. This is what happens.
When you set a goal, it's usually something substantial. You don't broadcast on social media that you will tie your shoes this morning. The bigger the goal, the happier and more motivated you feel when you set that goal.
This is because your brain both loves and hates change. The difference is in the type of change. Setting goals is seen as positive. This triggers the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine and other feel-good hormones. They make you feel good, giving you happiness, joy, motivation, and other positive emotions.
They don't last very long. As soon as you have to actually take action, they are no longer found at extreme levels. If you do finally achieve your goal, they will return. But while you have to motivate yourself to do all the hard work in between setting the goal and achieving it, you are on your own.
After the euphoria of imagining a new reality that comes with setting a goal passes, your brain begins to resist change. It was fine with you painting a wonderful new picture of the future. Now that you've got to take action to make that happen, your brain resists. You experience all sorts of negative emotions.
It begins to realize you'll have to do things differently than you have up until now. You start to push back mentally. Your mind tells you that all the efforts needed to achieve something wonderful aren't guaranteed to make that happen. Unfortunately, they might lead to a lower quality of life.
This is your ego talking. It just wants you to keep humming along; anything different is seen as a potential threat to your existence. So you resist the hard work, and stress pops up because cortisol is now at higher-than-normal levels.
How to Hack the Goal Setting/Happiness Relationship for Positive Results
Don't set goals without thinking first. The more goals you set, the more frustrated you'll become long-term. That initial happiness goes away quickly after you set a goal. This means that you should be selective and only set goals directly related to important values and beliefs you hold dear.
This is proven to keep you going after the dopamine honeymoon is over.
You tend to stay on the path of goal achievement when a goal makes sense to your values and the things that are important to you. It would help if you also cut a big goal into smaller bite-sized pieces because each benchmark you set and achieve gives you another shot at feel-good chemicals.
We all want to be happy. This is just normal. You deserve all the happiness in the world. Set your goals according to your true values for more happiness and less stress and self-doubt. Then chop up a big goal into smaller pieces. Every time you achieve a milestone, celebrate. This gives you regular doses of dopamine to keep the positive emotions coming, which means a greater chance of goal achievement and happiness.
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