Wheary: Resolve to turn our thinking around

Jennifer Wheary is a senior fellow at Demos, a public policy organization in Manhattan.

Forecast for this weekend: countdowns of the best 100 songs of the year, reviews of 2011's top news stories, tributes to the famous and noteworthy who have died. With all those retrospectives, it's natural to get a little nostalgic. We have all likely had a mix of bad and good this year, of things we've done or wish we had. And at the end of it all, most of us will make our own assessments of how 2011 has gone.

Whether we're satisfied or see areas for improvement, many of us will see the new year as an opportunity.

Ninety million Americans set at least one resolution for 2011, and about two-thirds of the country say they make New Year's resolutions at least once in a while, according to research by the Barna Group, a California-based consultancy. Yet less than 30 percent report experiencing any long-lasting change from these personal pledges.

Losing weight and exercising are the top resolutions year after year. Sales of gym memberships swell and, for a few weeks in early January, treadmills have waiting lists. Yet only 40 percent of New Year's gym memberships ever get used at all, and attendance is back to normal by the time February rolls around, according to Time magazine.

Quitting smoking is another popular end-of-year promise. Yet only about 15 percent of those who resolve to quit are able to keep that commitment at all in the new year.

When researchers in the United Kingdom conducted a study of people who failed to meet their resolutions in 2009, they found that four out of five of them had focused on the downside of not achieving their goals -- as opposed to the benefits of succeeding at them. Those who failed had lined up few strategies other than mere, sheer will power and telling themselves not to engage in the behavior they were trying to change.

The language used to make resolutions is extremely important. Psychologists who study the effects of language on behavior have found that the brain has a hard time accurately processing negative instructions. When someone says, "Don't touch that," our brains bypass the "Don't" and focus on the "touch that."

So telling yourself "I will not overeat" is not nearly as helpful as saying "I will eat in a healthy way." Intentions and everyday small changes couched in positive terms are the ones that stick.

Medical experts who work for Duke University's Center for Integrative Medicine have found that setting effective goals in this way is key to successful weight loss. In studying what makes New Year's resolutions successful, researchers for the American Psychological Association found that action, not negation, is what leads to change.

The power of intention and the importance of stating goals positively -- as things to be done, as opposed to "nots" to be avoided -- is important on a personal level. But it can also be applied politically. That's worth considering as we enter the 2012 election year, with our country in an interesting and precarious position.

One of the tactics on the campaign trail will be the noise of negation. Whether it's Republicans attacking President Barack Obama, Obama attacking Republicans, or hometown politicians seeking to unseat state legislative leaders, many will run on a platform of "not being the other guy," of "not" instituting their competitors' policies. Going negative can be a successful short-term political strategy, but it's no way to govern. This type of "not" gets us no closer to finding solutions and committing to doing something positive.

Whether in our individual lives or in our government leaders, the promise to not do something leaves us at a loss. What we set in our sights is what we ultimately see and act on. If we want to make any lasting changes in 2012 -- or even any helpful intermittent ones -- we should start with that as a premise.