By Jason Lim
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I was to let the refreshed vigor and energy of the Year of the Pig infuse me with a "can-do" spirit while whipping my chronic procrastination into a cowardly retreat back into the dark corner of my id.
After all, I couldn't bring shame to the legendary spirit of the Saemaul and Chollima mobilization that wrought the "Miracle on the Han" and (temporarily) "White Rice and Beef Soup" to South and North Korea, respectively. There had to be some genetic element to all the historical Korean productivity that I had to have inherited. Well, this was the year that I would be tapping into that hereditary potential.
Nope. I saw that it was cloudy outside and quickly went back to sleep.
First of all, how can I greet the new year's sun when I can't see it? Surely, that's not my fault. Second, there is always the Lunar New Year. After all, I hadn't specified which new year. In any case, calendars are a cultural construct.
Why should I be beholden to what some Catholic pope named Gregory came up with during the Middle Ages and forced upon the indigenous peoples of the world by the Western European hegemony as they enslaved the globe? Since I am Asian, it makes more sense for me to greet the Lunar New Year sun.
Comforted by that very fleeting, indignant outcry for social justice, I reasserted my right to choose my own cultural heritage by snoring like the red dragon. And if I fail to greet the sun on the Lunar New Year, there is always Rosh Hashanah. Having grown up in the Bronx idolizing Jackie Mason and spouting Yiddish profanities, I can lay claim to some miniscule equity to that holiday. If Jews can eat Chinese food on Christmas, then I can culturally appropriate their holidays to suit my character weakness.
Yes, I start out every year as a failure of my own making. At least, I am not alone. Statistics on New Year's resolutions are not pretty. Supposedly only 8 percent of the resolutions are actually kept, although I have my doubts since it's based on self-reported surveys. Eighty percent of New Year's resolutions fail by February, according another report, which actually seems pretty impressive to me.
At this point, I think it's time to admit that "New Year's resolution" is the textbook definition of an oxymoron since no one seems to keep them for long yet everyone makes them. To borrow from the legendary Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
I don't know about anyone else, but I decided to look deeper into my failures as a New Year's resolution keeper. My resolutions are not outlandish. For example, start exercising regularly; lose 15 pounds and run a 10-minute mile; or, submit my Korea Times columns on time. In order to accomplish these, I have to be disciplined, diligent and proactive. Guess what? I don't like being disciplined, diligent, or proactive. I actually enjoy being impulsive, lazy and procrastinating.
And there's the first rub. I actually don't want to change. Sure, I tell myself intellectually that exercising regularly, losing weight, and being on time with projects are all good for me. However, my emotional habits disagree; they don't want to change.
Writing for Business Insider, Dr. Mark Laughlin says, "Resolutions are typically about habits, and habit formation involves a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Patterns of signals between neurons in the basal ganglia shift as we perform a new behavior.
When we are pleased by the results ― whether we're eating a delicious piece of cake or serving a tennis ball ― there's a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. Over time, this association with feeling good can make a behavior almost automatic."
Here is the second rub. Not only don't I want to do them, I hadn't established any associated reward pathway for the new habits I want to adopt. And human beings are notoriously bad at planning for the long run; even worse, I am probably that kid in the marshmallow test that didn't even hear the offer for the second one because I was already stuffing my mouth with the first one.
In sum, keeping my New Year's resolution means I have to overcome my powerful subconscious emotional resistance to new habits and hack the dopamine squirting neuropathway that somehow incentivizes me to engage in intolerable activities that will eventually lead to a long-term (but not necessarily guaranteed) payoff?
No wonder this is hard.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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