On the first of every year, millions of Americans make a New Year’s resolution (or two or three) that they won’t keep. Why we keep making resolutions—and why they're so hard to follow.

每一年的開始,數(shù)百萬(wàn)美國(guó)人制定的新年計(jì)劃(2個(gè)或者3個(gè))都沒(méi)能堅(jiān)持下去。為什么我們一直下決心?然而為什么堅(jiān)持下去是如此艱難?

There's one obvious reason why most resolutions fail: We usually focus on goals or tasks that we haven’t been able to achieve over the past year. “You are making it your New Year’s goal because you keep failing at it,” says Tim Pychyl, a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa. The other terrible thing about New Year’s resolutions, he says, is that making them requires no action. The simple thought—the idea that we intend to lose weight or exercise more— just thinking about losing weight makes us feel good, and we don’t actually have to go out and do the tasks necessary to achieve that goal.

大部分新年決心失敗的一個(gè)最主要的原因是,我們下決心的時(shí)候往往總是關(guān)注的是那個(gè)我們?cè)谶^(guò)去一年里沒(méi)法做到的目標(biāo)。“你下決心要完成這件事,是因?yàn)榭偸窃谶@件事上失敗。”渥太華卡爾頓大學(xué)心理學(xué)家 Tim Pychyl 說(shuō)道。“另一個(gè)可怕的事情是,下一個(gè)新年決定不需要任何實(shí)際行動(dòng)。一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的想法,我們想要減肥或者多運(yùn)動(dòng),我們光想想減肥就已經(jīng)自我感覺(jué)良好了,所以事實(shí)上我們沒(méi)有必要出去做一些事情去實(shí)現(xiàn)它。”

“They make the intention now, but they don’t do anything. It’s like going to buy furniture and not having to pay anything until 2019.” says Pychyl, “That’s the selective nature of it.” He adds we would never form a New Year's resolution around tasks we like to do. We already did those things the year before, so there's nothing satisfying about pledging to keep them up. Procrastination is one of the number one reasons resolutions fail.

Even as we try to overcome our resistance to our resolutions, something a little more powerful takes over in our brains: The force of habit. In simple terms, habits are connections of neurons that work together that have been beneficial to us over time. The more we execute the habitual behavior, the stronger those neuronal connections in our brains become.

即使我們竭盡所能克服我們對(duì)決心的抵抗,但是我們的頭腦中還有一個(gè)強(qiáng)大的力量在阻止我們?nèi)��?shí)現(xiàn)新年決心,這就是習(xí)慣。簡(jiǎn)單來(lái)說(shuō),習(xí)慣就是一起協(xié)作的神經(jīng)元之間的聯(lián)系,我們一直從這些聯(lián)系中受益。我們的生活習(xí)慣越規(guī)律,這些神經(jīng)元在我們大腦中的聯(lián)系就越強(qiáng)大。

Through the course of human evolution, habits have been a really good thing; they are automatic thoughts or actions that have, for example, saved us from predators.

在人類的進(jìn)化過(guò)程中,習(xí)慣對(duì)我們有很大的好處,它們是我們所擁有的不需要經(jīng)過(guò)思考的想法和行動(dòng),幫助我們躲避狩獵者。

By understanding what’s going on in your brain, you have a better chance at controlling it.

只有明白了人類大腦的這一機(jī)制,你才能更好地控制自己。