Dealing with a backslide

Have you thrown your hands in the air this month?

Your new year’s resolution are sitting on the side of the road like a flat tire? 

Last week’s post was shifting gears out of a bad habit I was getting into in December… snoozing. 

Beep. Snooze. Sleep. (repeat!)

TL;DR I was snoozing and then I reflected on this frustrating behavior while journaling with some other gal pals and I realized that I wanted to stop this and start getting out of bed at 7am. I texted a friend that same night sharing that the next morning I’d be waking up at 7am. 

The amazing thing is that I have now consistently woken up at 7am since then (pat on the back, victory lap for me :). 

And I also realize, there are going to be moments of backsliding this year!

Just like any climb up a hill, sometimes progress isn’t happening and there’s a regression. 

So in case you are feeling [insert bad feeling here] about how you aren’t keeping up with those resolutions this month, I’m here to offer some tricks in the backslide:

YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PREDICTOR OF YOUR FUTURE BEHAVIOR

Please nerd out with me now on some psychology research!

When people self-predict completing a future project, action or accomplishment they are, “often inaccurate and in many cases, tend to be overly optimistic.”¹ This is in large part because people “place too much weight on their current intentions, which produces an optimistic bias.”¹ that their intentions will carry them to do the thing/behavior to achieve what they intend to do. 

Mic Drop in my mind. 

Wait….just because I really really really intend to do something doesn’t mean it is actually going to happen?????

I was sharing this with my friend Alison who very nonchalantly replied, “YES, people are poor predictors of their future actions.”

As someone who literally wears bracelets with mantras and has posted up vision boards of my intentions this felt like a surprise. But now, it seems so obvious.

8 year old me predicted I was going to be an Olympic sprinter. Spoiler Alert: that didn’t happen!

Intention ≠ Thing I want to accomplish WILL happen. 

I am not a magician.

Intention + behavior and action —> Accomplishing task/thing

Now some researchers started to wonder…. is the reason people are such poor predictors of their future behavior is because people perhaps aren’t weighing the barriers to completing these tasks and other demands for their time when crafting predictions ?¹

Sadly, their research didn’t find a magic bullet. Methodically weighing obstacles at the time of intention setting didn’t lead to creating more realistic intentions and predictions of future behavior.¹ However, their research did indicate a correlation that a strong to intention is more likely to result in actually doing the thing.¹ 

Super strong intention (more likely) outcome will happen. 

(relief to my vision boards to hear that)

Personally, just having this understanding our psychology is helpful. Just because I want it badly and I’m predicting it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen is a relief.

I am human. I will make errors in predictions (as will others).

This does not mean I am a failure. This does not mean others are failures.

This means I’m human…Be kind (think less Regina George and more Mister Rogers… more on that next week).

UNDERSTAND YOUR FEELINGS & SHARING THEM 

Regressing on your goals or behaviors can be very demotivating. And I’m not sure about you, but getting back in the saddle when I’m demotivated is really hard!!

One psychologist, Dr. Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg, when supporting business teams during the pandemic reflected that regression is actually a very normal stage that a team has to move through. In that instance, it’s helpful to “foster an environment where it is safe and legitimate [...] to be honest about their state of mind so you can begin to move forward.”²  

Dr. Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg offers:

While the goals you might have for 2025 may be solo goals, sans a team:

• Take a moment to reflect on where you energy is 

• Share that with a friend, colleague, coach, therapist, or loved one

• Sharing might offer you space to reflect on your state of mind and the type of support you need to move into a headspace where taking action is more fluid. 

I’ll be sharing more about another trick to dealing with backsliding next week… 

In the meantime, on a scale of 0-10 where’s your state of mind/energy like? 

Wheels up, 

Ellen 

1  Poon, C. S. K., Koehler, D. J., & Buehler, R. (2014). On the psychology of self-prediction: Consideration of situational barriers to intended actions. Judgment and Decision Making, 9(3), 207–225. doi:10.1017/S1930297500005763

2  If You Feel Like You’re Regressing, You’re Not Alone. (2020, May 22). Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/05/if-you-feel-like-youre-regressing-youre-not-alone