This Year Create Resolutions Based in Love

By February, around 80 percent of people have left behind their New Year’s resolutions. The reason? It’s hard to stick to a program structured on “fixing” yourself. If January was a wash for you, this month, let’s explore a new paradigm for change, one based on celebrating what you love about yourself. 

Stanford psychology professor and author of The Willpower Instinct Kelly McGonigal told TedTalks that most resolutions go awry because we resolve to do something we think we should do, and in fact, we don’t actually want to follow through on the resolutions. 

“I did this New Year’s resolution makeover once with this woman who had made the same resolution year after year to become a better cook, because she thought that’s what good moms and good wives did,” she explained. “She was a terrible cook, and she didn’t want to learn how to cook. That’s a mistake people make, is they think they’re just going to fundamentally change who they are with a resolution. ‘I’m going to become a morning person.’ ‘I’m going to become a health nut.’ ‘I’m going to become organized.’ The best resolutions are ones that strengthen something you already are, but you may not have been fully investing in.”

Below we’ve rounded up some tips to help you do just that.

First, take stock. Our subconscious, McGonigal warns, tends to drive our resolution-setting, using the exact wrong questions: “What should I be doing that I’m not?” or “What do I need to change about myself?” Avoid this trap – consider your life both as it is and as it could be. 

“What is it that you want to offer the world?,” asks McGonigal. “Who do you want to be, what do you want more of in your life? And then [ask]: ‘How might I get there? What would create that as a consequence?’ When you start from that point of view…resolutions can be incredibly effective.”

To turn your attention to what matters most, Tim Ferriss, tech investor, author, and podcaster, offered a system via his blog that he uses called the Past Year Review. Ferriss recommends looking back at your calendar month-by-month and considering the people, commitments, and activities you engaged with; then, ask yourself: Which of these elicited strong positive or negative emotions for me at the time? Consider the patterns, what people, activities, and commitments most consistently brought positive (or negative) feelings? Use those findings to drive your future decision-making. Plan to spend more time doing what brought positivity and minimize what was negative. And show some urgency. “Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP, lest they get crowded out by the noise that will otherwise fill your days.” Ferriss wrote.

Don’t underestimate “friction.” Wendy Wood, a Psychologist at USC, refers to the “tiny barriers” you face daily to reach your goals as “friction” and she discussed its impact on habit-formation in a Q&A for Wharton professor Katy Milkman’s (excellent!) newsletter. Specifically, she wrote about our tendency to underestimate friction’s impact on our choices. 

In 2020, Wood conducted a study on voting behaviors during the Presidential election. She asked respondents about their intention to vote and the factors they believed would promote or prevent them from doing so. Most responses alluded to the respondent’s beliefs, values, and candidate preferences. Very few mentioned the factors we would call “friction,” which includes things like childcare, lines at the polls, time away from work, parking, weather, etc. Post-election, researchers found that in actuality, values and friction were equally likely to have impacted the person’s voting decision. 

Wood wrote, “All of this speaks to the fact that we tend to overvalue agency and underestimate the influence of difficulties in our environment, like barriers that can stop us from doing things.” The lesson here is to maintain your awareness of how friction can impede or, if proactively negated, aid you in following up on your resolution. 

Consider the logistics around what you want to do for the rest of 2026 and create a plan to promote your own success. Start by noticing what gets in the way of your goals and then create a workaround: sleep in your workout clothes, purchase only the healthy snacks for home, or block out time on your calendar to pursue a hobby.

Activate your learning mode. Eduardo Briceño, Author of The Performance Paradox, gave a TedTalk titled “How to Get Better at the Things You Care About.” In it, he shared his research, which showed that the most effective people across disciplines share a commonality: they regularly alternate between performance and learning modes. 

Performance mode is about execution. It is doing the thing and doing it as well as possible. Whatever it may be, playing tennis, giving a persuasive sales pitch, or performing a surgery. Learning mode, on the other hand, is about proactively dissecting your performance to identify areas for improvement. He cites Beyoncé as an example. She runs her concerts in performance mode, seeking the best experience for her audience. However, post-concert, she activates learning mode, watching tapes of the show and seeking ways to improve. She keeps notes for herself and shares feedback with the other performers and technicians. 

Briceño notes that after an initial couple of years in a role, most a person’s performance plateaus because of their sole focus on performance mode. For improvement, we must seek out time to learn and develop. It sounds simple, but it requires a willingness to make room for mistakes and subsequent growth, the vulnerability to ask for feedback, and ultimately the ability to let go of perfection. 

At the conclusion of his talk, he asked, “What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving, and becoming? What if we each always had something we were working to improve?”

Be kind to yourself. As you embark upon any change or resolution-strategy, it behooves you to do so with self-compassion and openness to missteps. Which, in addition to sounding really nice, is a strategy backed by science. Research shows that self-kindness is more effective than shame. 

In The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal wrote, “If you think that the key to greater willpower is being harder on yourself, you are not alone. But you are wrong. Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control... In contrast, self-compassion—being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure—is associated with more motivation and better self-control. Consider, for example, a study at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, that tracked the procrastination of students over an entire semester. Lots of students put off studying for the first exam, but not every student made it a habit. Students who were harder on themselves for procrastinating on their first exam were more likely to procrastinate on later exams than students who forgave themselves. The harder they were on themselves about procrastinating the first time, the longer they procrastinated for the next exam! Forgiveness – not guilt – helped them get back on track.”

As you continue into 2026, do so focused on what you want more of in your life. Pursue those things with an eye for “friction,” a dedication to learning and improvement, and self-compassion for the inevitable moments when you miss the mark. 

We’ll wrap things up with some inspiring words from Nike Running’s global head coach Chris Bennett: “Love is a much better fuel than hate.” We think that’s a perfect reason to use Valentine’s Day as the kick-off to your updated 2026 resolutions. 

The Tactics of Persuasion

Persuasion, according to Aristotle, is made up of three components: ethos (credibility), logos (logic or evidence), and pathos (emotion). Carmine Gallo, Harvard professor and author, affirmed the validity of this equation in a Knowledge@Wharton interview. “What’s fascinating, and the competitive advantage that I talk about, is that the ancient brain, the primitive brain, has not changed. The way we like to communicate, the way we process information through the vehicle of story, through emotions, through empathy—those things have not changed since the beginning of time. That’s why I call ‘mastering the ancient art of persuasion’ a competitive skill,” he said. 

While the art of persuasion has not changed significantly over time, there’s new research that sheds light on the science. Jonah Berger, a Wharton marketing professor and author of Magic Words, studies how language drives outcomes and how various communications tactics can lead to increased sales, satisfaction, and/or engagement. 

We’ve rounded up some of his findings below:

Default to the present tense, when possible. Using active voice makes you sound more confident and increases your influence.  “Let's talk about past tense for a second. If someone said, ‘That book had a great plot,’ ‘France was fun,’ or ‘This product won an award,’ it suggests that this particular person liked the book when they read it, or they enjoyed France when they visited,” Berger said on a Knowledge@Wharton podcast. “If you're willing to say not just that France was fun, but it is fun; not just that this book had a great plot, but it has a great plot…it suggests you're more confident or certain about what you're saying. As a result, people are more likely to follow up on your opinion and be persuaded.”

Don’t hedge (And, if you must, own it). You already know to avoid filler language (umms and ahhs), but Berger also recommends incorporating “certainty” language. In the Wall Street Journal, Berger wrote, “When people speak with certainty, we’re more likely to think they’re right.” However, most of us default to “hedging” language, such as “that might work” or “this could be a strong plan,” which makes others less likely to take our advice. If you must hedge, Berger’s research shows that adding a personal pronoun to the statement increases how confident you sound. Try: “I believe that this plan could work” or “Seems like a great idea to me.” This connects you more closely with the idea, which makes your statement more convincing.

Deploy concrete language intentionally. Berger’s findings show that concrete language is most effective in making someone feel heard and/or resolving an issue, keeping a reader engaged in a longer-form content piece, or improving audience comprehension. “A service representative answering a request to find a pair of shoes, for example, could say that they would go look for them, those shoes, or those lime green Nikes. Those lime green Nikes is more concrete. The words used are more specific, tangible, and real. These variations might seem like simple turns of phrase, but they had an important impact on how customers felt about the interaction,” Berger said.  

Make it about identity. On the surface, asking someone to vote versus asking someone to be a voter doesn’t seem all that different. And yet, a 2011 research study out of Stanford University found a 15 percent increase in voting among adults asked to be “voters” rather than to “vote” in an election. In an interview with Entrepreneur, Berger describes why appealing to identity is so persuasive. “Category labels often imply a degree of permanence and stability,” he said. “Rather than noting what someone did or does, feels or felt, category labels hint at a deeper essence: Who someone is.”

Choose your words wisely and take note of how they’re received. Berger’s research shows that some “magic words” create impact where others do not. In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote, “Sometimes it’s just one word that makes a difference. Research that my colleague and I published in 2017, for example, found that saying you “recommend” rather than ‘like’ something makes people 32 percent more likely to take your suggestion. Other words operate more like gateways: A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that adding the word ‘because’ to a request, followed by the reason for it, increased compliance by 50 percent.” 

Finally, don’t forget to notice how your language impacts others and adjust accordingly. That’s what ultimately drives effectiveness.

What We’re Getting Wrong About Making a Good First Impression

We’ll start with the good news and then get to the even-better news. 

The good news: You make a better first impression than you think you do. You know those moments after you meet someone, when you cringe over your potential awkwardness? Research shows that you don’t need to do that. The person you just met liked you and enjoyed your conversation much more than you think. 

In 2018, Erica Boothby, in partnership with other researchers, Gus Cooney, Gillian Sandstrom, and Margaret Clark, set out to understand how well people do at gauging their own likeability. The research study looked at pairs of people who were meeting for the first time in three different settings: a research lab, as attendees of a personal development workshop, and as first year dorm roommates. After the meetings, both participants were surveyed on how much they enjoyed the interaction and liked the other person and how much they believed the other person liked them. The finding, in short: People are more likeable than they think.

Routinely, participants underestimated how positively their counterparts rated the interaction. The researchers called the difference between a person’s estimation of how much another liked them and the reality, the “liking gap.” Notably the liking gap remained over several months, as demonstrated by the roommates included in the study, and was the most pronounced amongst those who considered themselves shy, although it occurred across personality types. 

It might not surprise you that the liking gap stems from our natural tendency to fixate on our own perceived errors. The study’s authors wrote, “the liking gap exists not because people fail to signal that they like each other—in fact, the signals are right there for people to see—but, rather, people are too focused on their own self-critical thoughts to notice.” 

According to the research, when we conclude an interaction, we immediately start evaluating ourselves. The study found that “people tend to compare themselves unfavorably with their ideal version of themselves…ruminate about the worst possible outcomes…and focus on the things they need to fix for next time.” 

If we were to set this scenario at the workplace, you might think you came off as less informed about a project than you are, or that you seemed smug about your accomplishments, or worry that you blathered on about an unimportant detail. 

It’s hard for us to see that others don’t have this same perspective on our faults, Boothby et al wrote. What we must remember is that not only are the people we meet not comparing us to an ideal, but they’re likely also cataloging their own perceived shortcomings. 

Curious about the liking gap in the workplace and team interactions specifically, researchers performed a follow-up study. It confirmed that not only does the liking gap exist within organizations and teams, but it was, “strongly related to a range of important interpersonal, team and job-level outcomes.” These included a person’s willingness to ask for help and their comfort in communicating openly and honestly, which impact a person’s job satisfaction and effectiveness in their role. The study’s authors wrote, “The liking gap predicts important workplace outcomes... If only people knew, then, how positively their teammates actually felt about them, they might communicate better, feel more included on their teams, and be happier overall with their jobs.”

Easing the Effects of the Liking Gap 

Which brings us to the “even-better” news promised earlier: Your awareness of the liking gap is a powerful tool. 

By giving yourself a pass on perfection and opting not to fixate on your flaws or slips, you can rest-assured that your first impression (or early impression) was, in all likelihood, good enough. In addition to this info making you feel more confident, you can use it to develop relationships more effectively. 

In an interview with CNBC, Boothby suggested easing the effects of the liking gap in the workplace by taking action. If you appreciated your co-worker’s conversation over a coffee, or you enjoyed meeting someone at a networking event, don’t wait for them—reach out!  They too are likely underestimating how much you enjoyed the meeting and are hesitating on a next step because they feel vulnerable. 

Your actions don’t have to correspond to a special occasion, either. If you enjoy working with someone or a group of people, tell them directly. Providing them with clear indicators that you appreciate their company and work, and you wish to continue developing the relationship, will make them feel seen.

Furthermore, during future interactions, try being more attuned to your partners, rather than fixated on your own perceived flaws. First, consider the signals that they are sending: Are they nodding? Smiling? Are they appearing open or physically closed off? What indirect signs are they providing about how they’re perceiving you or the conversation? Second, make sure you approach the conversation with genuine curiosity and interest.  

Boothby, as a guest on The Hidden Brain podcast, described the power of asking follow-up questions in conversation. She said, “The research on social anxiety shows that if you go into a conversation with the goal of learning as much about your partner as possible, that shifts your attention from being focused on your own thoughts and what you might be doing wrong, toward being focused on your conversation partner.” 

Understanding the liking gap—and actively closing it for others—makes for more meaningful connections.