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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and the concept of creating New Year's

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Speaker 1: resolutions is so ingrained in US culture that the government

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Speaker 1: keeps a list of popular resolutions and resources for achieving them.

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Speaker 1: It's a Baker's dozen of good intentions, including drink less alcohol,

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Speaker 1: eat healthy food, get a better education, get a better job,

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Speaker 1: get fit, managed debt, managed stress, and recycle. Additional research

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Speaker 1: backs up this list's universality. According to a eleven Marst

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Speaker 1: University poll, losing weight to top the list for one

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Speaker 1: in five resolution making Americans closely followed by exercising more,

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Speaker 1: with spending less and saving more, Quitting smoking, and being

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Speaker 1: a better person all tied for third. But is it

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Speaker 1: true that most people don't keep their resolutions? The answer,

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Speaker 1: as many of us around the house to Fork's office

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Speaker 1: were relieved to discover, appears to be a resounding yes.

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Speaker 1: Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author with a penchant for

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Speaker 1: mass participation, exp yeraments found that of people making New

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Speaker 1: Year's resolutions were confident that they'd stick it out, yet

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Speaker 1: only a scant twelve percent really did. So why bother

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Speaker 1: a new year's resolutions are as one author wrote, a

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Speaker 1: triumph of hope over experience. They're a way to quantify

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Speaker 1: what we wish for ourselves. There are means of cataloging

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Speaker 1: our personal dissatisfactions, and perhaps most importantly, their method of

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Speaker 1: erasing errors of the past year. Yes, new year's resolutions

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Speaker 1: are all about hopefulness, and it's always been that way.

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Speaker 1: Of course, ringing in the new year isn't a construct

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Speaker 1: of modern Americans. Some four thousand years ago, Babylonians rang

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Speaker 1: in their new year with an eleven day festival in March. An.

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Speaker 1: Ancient Egyptians celebrated the advent of their new calendar during

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Speaker 1: the Nile Rivers annual flood. By four to six b c. E.

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Speaker 1: Roman Emperor Julius Caesar had moved the first day of

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Speaker 1: the year to January one, in honor of the Roman

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Speaker 1: god of beginnings, Janice, an idea that took some time

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Speaker 1: to catch on. However, In two c E. Pope Gregory

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Speaker 1: the eight brought the January first new year back in

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Speaker 1: vogue with the Gregorian calendar, a concept that persists today.

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Speaker 1: The origin of making New Year's resolutions rests with the Babylonians,

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Speaker 1: who reportedly made promises to the gods and hopes that

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Speaker 1: earn good favor in the coming year. They often resolved

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Speaker 1: to get out of debt. Sound familiar. Many of us

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Speaker 1: are still making that resolution today, So what's the secret

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Speaker 1: to actually keeping it? Just wanting something to change is

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Speaker 1: not enough. You need a strategy to make it stick.

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Speaker 1: One way to do this is to share your resolution

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Speaker 1: with others. We spoke with Joe Ferrari, professor of psychology

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Speaker 1: at DePaul University in Chicago. As he pointed out, when

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Speaker 1: you keep resolutions a secret, no one is going to

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Speaker 1: check up on you. You're only accountable to yourself. He

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Speaker 1: says that a party to publicly share your resolutions is

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Speaker 1: an admirable way to ring in the new year. Social

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Speaker 1: media offers another avenue to let others in on your goals.

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Speaker 1: But once you've involved others in your resolutions, what steps

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Speaker 1: can you take to ensure that when they do check

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Speaker 1: up on you, you'll have something positive to report the

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Speaker 1: success of your New year's resolutions starts in your head.

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Speaker 1: Limiting yourself to a few resolutions, maybe even one, and

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Speaker 1: being specific are a few things to keep in mind.

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Speaker 1: This prevents overload and frustration. For example, I want to

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Speaker 1: lose ten pounds by March first, or I want to

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Speaker 1: save fifty dollars of each paycheck. The best goals are

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Speaker 1: challenging but manageable, and that's a sensitive balance that only

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Speaker 1: you can find for yourself. Overly ambitious goals can drain

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Speaker 1: a person's confidence when they're not met. Instead, build on small,

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Speaker 1: observable victories and possibly achieve bigger goals down the line,

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Speaker 1: and take things on one at a time. Whatever goals

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Speaker 1: you do tackle, be sure to monitor your progress. Ferrari said,

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Speaker 1: if your resolution is to lose weight, check your weight regularly.

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Speaker 1: If it's to save money, right down where you've spent

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Speaker 1: your money, monitoring those few challenging goals you set will

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Speaker 1: dramatically improve your success rate. Sometimes just the act of

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Speaker 1: recording everything you eat or spend can cause you to

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Speaker 1: eat or spend less, even if you don't consciously change

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Speaker 1: anything else. Whatever your new year's goals, give yourself some

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Speaker 1: time to make them a reality, more time than you

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Speaker 1: may have planned on. Actually, while most people cling to

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Speaker 1: the widespread belief that new habits can be formed in

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Speaker 1: twenty one days, new research is suggesting that we need

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Speaker 1: a longer timetable. One recent study found that it took

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Speaker 1: participants in average of sixty six days to do something

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Speaker 1: different and stick with it. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Laurel Dove and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and lots of other fresh topics, visit our home

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Speaker 1: planet as stuff works dot com