PragerU Asks Millennials What Their New Year’s Resolutions Are

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Are you going to complete them, or are you going to blow them off and forget about them? We both know what’s more likely.

There’s a problem with making new year resolutions that few people really understand. The problem is that your mind is rendered on a number of different neurological systems, and at any given point, one system will be more dominant than the others.

In the winter time, for example, particularly after the holiday feasts, we are somewhat more than overweight. During this time, our bodies and brains are more likely to produce fewer impulses to eat. It’s a satiation response. That makes it much easier to skip a meal, maybe have a workout, and then say to yourself, “This is me from now on.”

The state your mind is in when you make a resolution is not a permanent state. It’s like when you are tired, and you think, “Man, I’m going to stay in bed for the rest of my life.” You know that’s silly, but it’s the same when we say we’re going to make drastic changes based on an overfed mid-winter state.

When we make resolutions, it shouldn’t be to do a difficult thing every day. It should be to establish habits that make us more likely to want to do the difficult thing more often. Still, some resolutions are worth making.

Here’s PragerU with a man on the street segment, asking Californian beach goers about their new year resolutions.