This is How Your New Year's Resolutions WILL work

Start the year well with good resolutions! A month without drinking, less smoking, losing weight, going to the gym... In this article, we provide you with practical tips to actually achieve your noble goals. Even when things get tough. But we wouldn't be Dutch-Headshop if we didn't add a smartshop twist to it.

Good resolutions are goals for the new year in which we agree with ourselves to change in some way. We feel good about it, and hopefully, it also leads to improvements in our daily lives. However, it turns out that the majority of the population doesn't achieve their good resolutions. A 2016 ING Bank study [1] showed that 80% of Dutch people have good resolutions. Of those, 83% think they will achieve the goal. Heavily overestimated. Because when it comes down to it, only 17% actually achieved that goal. On top of that, if you ask the same people what their good resolution was last year, 30% have already forgotten it. How do you make sure you reach the finish line?

Tips for Achieving Your Good Resolutions

What can you do to achieve your resolutions? We provide you with tips based on what we have learned and read.

Make Your Good Resolutions SMART

Another thing we often do at Dutch-Headshop. SMART stands for:

  • Specific. What do you want to do, when do you start, how will you approach it, who do you need for it, and where will you do it? And perhaps most importantly, why are you doing this? We'll get back to that later. Losing weight is not a specific goal. Much more specific: lose 2 kilograms by not snacking for 30 days, no soft drinks, and no meat on weekdays. Measure before breakfast.
  • Measurable. How much do you need to do to achieve your goal? And how do you measure that?
  • Acceptable. Do you believe in your good resolutions? Do others support them too? Then you can seek help with that. But be careful*
  • Realistic. Once again, make your goal smaller and achievable.
  • Time-bound. When do you want to achieve the goal? End of January? December 31st?

*Stop telling people what you're going to do, just do it.

Something special happens in your brain when you tell someone your plans. By telling what you're going to do, your brain registers that you've already started. This has to do with a shot of dopamine that is released when sharing your good resolutions.

dopamine temptations

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (signal transmitter) that makes you want something you don't have now. It motivates us to take action in that way. But the difference is that dopamine doesn't execute that action. It's not like you're doing something just by thinking about it. Yet, your gray matter thinks you are. On top of that, there's now less dopamine available to actually carry out your good resolutions.

Telling your good resolutions can take the wind out of your sails. At the same time, sharing your plans can also create a sense of responsibility. If you tell your partner that you want to stop drinking, your partner can help and support you when you're struggling.

a man whispers a shocking secret into a woman's ear. sepia effect.

Stick with it when things get tough

Everyone has their off days. You're exhausted after the first week of January, and you reach for old habits that you're used to or that provide a momentary comfort. You give in. You reach for the bottle, the joint, the snacks. You lean back, turn on YouTube, and before you know it, you're doomscrolling through social media that only give you a sense of inferiority. Well, those good resolutions can go in the trash. You didn't make it, you tell yourself.

But is that really the case? You were doing well for 5 days, right? Now it's the weekend, and in one weak moment, you feel like you've failed, so you won't reach the finish line. You can already feel your mind wandering, telling yourself that you'll never change. In December, you'll try again. If you feel like it. But what if you tell yourself a different story? Too bad you didn't reach your goal for a day. Tomorrow, continue where you left off.

Strangely enough, it doesn't work that way in our minds. We have to keep ourselves on track. But if we derail, we have a serious train accident. It requires a completely different way of thinking (and acting!) to follow through on your good resolutions. Think about this when things didn't go well yesterday.

a woman lies on the couch doomscrolling on her phone.

Choose 1 resolution instead of 10

External factors may cause you to fall back into old habits. It takes a certain amount of perseverance to achieve good resolutions. But if it turns out to be too complex? Then your resolutions are probably too ambitious.*

A good example in the form of an anecdote. A friend wants to quit smoking, caffeine, watching YouTube videos, smoking weed, drinking, exercising every day, drinking 2 liters of water, and keeping a diary. Yep, that's quite a list. If one thing goes wrong, it's easy to give in to all those other things. Suddenly, setbacks become even more severe when you completely lose track. It's better to choose one well-defined and achievable goal than trying to change yourself from the core. It takes at least 30 days to break a habit and another 30 days to get used to the new normal. And that's without considering any physical addictions that smoking, or even more intense, opioids bring.

Understanding Good Resolutions

Good resolutions stem from our desire to improve ourselves. For that reason alone, good resolutions are a good idea. If you want to be a better version of yourself tomorrow than you were today, you're doing yourself a favor in the long run. And possibly others too.

However, you must realize that you always carry yourself with you in your good resolutions. At the moment, you do things because you want to, because you're used to them, or because they've grown out of tradition. 

About Routines: Understanding Happiness

Wanting to change. Where does that come from? We expect that we or others will become happier if we change. The relationship between happiness and good resolutions is closely intertwined. To become happy, you can actually do only two things.

  • Meet that expectation or:
  • adjust that expectation.

Another anecdote. A good friend sometimes argues with his wife at home because the dishes are left unwashed. In this case, the husband and wife clearly have a different ideal image of the kitchen counter. He's fine with a few glasses, and she gets restless even if there's only one glass. To solve this problem, they can agree to do the dishes at one or more specific times. That's meeting the expectation. But you can also choose to compromise and adjust your tolerance for unwashed dishes. Either way, it will require effort from both parties to come back together.

a kitchen counter full of dirty dishes.

Being Content

Happiness is, without mincing words, a foolish concept. Happiness is something that doesn't actually exist. And the pursuit of happiness is a lifelong journey of disappointments and potential depression. To understand that, we can better call happiness contentment; being content in this moment.

You may now see that pursuing contentment in this moment is pointless. How can you act towards something that you can only find in this moment?

Often, we associate "happiness" with having more of something than we have now. More health; money; prestige. Those are not finite things. Once you've paid off your debt, how do you prevent yourself from making the same mistake again? Or once you've bought that car you've been looking forward to for years, don't you secretly want that shiny new car that overtakes you on the highway?

the well-known meme of a young man looking back at an attractive woman and his jealous girlfriend looking annoyed at him.

Breaking Routines with Help (from the Smartshop)

Think about what we wrote above. Put your phone aside for a moment and take 5 minutes to do nothing, to be aware of the thoughts in your head that want something other than what you have here and now. Notice that you feel uncomfortable with these thoughts. That's fine. It's okay to step out of your comfort zone. In fact, that's the goal: make your comfort zone bigger by forcing yourself to step outside of it.

An illustrative photo of the comfort zone. Feet standing in an unmarked piece of street, surrounded by splashing colors and stars, illustrating the magic of stepping out of your comfort zone.

One of the ways to really step out of your routine is to trip once. Magic mushrooms and magic truffles contain, among other things, psilocybin; a psychedelic substance that does something very special in your brain. It actually pauses all patterns and routines, giving you a completely different way of thinking for four to six hours. One of the symptoms of this is that light and sound come in almost unfiltered, making your brain struggle to organize it. That's why it seems like you're looking through a kaleidoscope. The higher the dosage, the more colorful it becomes.

But the higher the dosage, the more confronting the trip. You can come face to face with yourself in such a trip. Difficult, deep questions come up. Back to good resolutions, you can ask yourself why you actually drink alcohol. In everyday life, that question will come too close, and you'll be inclined to reach for the bottle. This is an example of the defense mechanism of everything that makes you, you; your ego. And that ego maintains itself throughout your life. Even after the intense trip slowly but surely returns.

That doesn't mean that a trip on magic truffles can't be amazing. This insight, combined with the beauty of colors, is truly something to have tried in your life. Do it responsibly, though; make sure there's a sober trip sitter with you and never take anything else in combination with truffles or magic mushrooms.

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