Dr. Tara Swart

Jonathan, if you and I both decided to learn Spanish and I used the Duolingo app and kind of just did it myself in my spare time, but you went for Spanish lessons once a week and you had an exam at the end of six months and then you had a trip planned to Mexico, right?

You would be much better at Spanish than me.

So it's also the intensity of the effort that you put into learning something new or changing a habit.

And those are the same things.

Changing a habit is basically learning something new for your brain.

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

So if you have a vacation coming up, then it's definitely much more likely that you will do what you need to do to get into shape than if you don't.

But we're talking about New Year's resolutions specifically because it's that time of year now.

But September is also a time, the kind of school year start, that people might think about changing something.

You could pick your own birthday as a time to start something new.

Apart from this, like you said, the time of year and whether there's an actual tangible reason at the end of it.

It's not so much to do with dates as it is to do with your motivation and your willpower.

So for example, before my wedding, what I did to get into shape, I would never, never have the motivation to do now.

You know, there was a very, very clear goal.

And what I ate and the exercise that I did was non-negotiable that that would be the case for, you know, at least three months.

And it was hard work, but in terms of the desire to do it and the motivation...

It's actually like really annoying because I sort of realized that there either has to be something really bad, like a health scare or something really good, like what you're going to look like on your wedding day to make you behave in a way that you obviously can, but it's definitely harder to do just in normal life.

Break things down into bite-sized chunks.

So small things that you feel confident that you can do.

Think about things that you are actively going to do rather than things that you don't want to do.