January 21st marks the start of the 3rd week of the new year, a time when commitments to stick with that New Year’s resolution to make personal changes starts to flag. What began with the best of intentions on January 1 tends to become onerous, and burdensome to the point of questioning the appropriateness of continuing the pursuit of that targeted modification of personal behavior.
There are psychological factors that explain this feeling and the discouraging negative self-talk that sustains it…I can’t do this; This is stupid; This just feels wrong; What was I thinking. James Prochaska from the University of Rhode Island spoke about the “stages of readiness to change” and how if one attempts a radical behavioral change before truly ready to make that change, even if sincerely desiring it, I will falter and fail, A.K.A., relapse.
As this is not an essay about “how to change,” I do not explore ending habits here. NOTE: If interested in learning more about successful behavior change, click on Self-Directed Behavior Change to read a short book I have written on the topic. Rather, this essay looks at that sense of “lost commitment” to pursuing that New Year’s resolution.
Kanter’s Law states that, everything looks like a failure in the middle. Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a professor
in the Harvard School of Business who writes about the sabotaging of the enthusiasm and optimism felt at the start of a project by the hard work required to realize success. She suggests that this sense that accomplishing one’s objective is beyond reach is common, especially when the initial enthusiasm and optimism wane when encountering the effort required to see it through “in the middle.”
Like the meaning in the adage, it’s always darkest before the dawn, Kanter’s Law reminds us that success with a project or when making a change in personal behavior has less to do with one’s level of effort or skill than with patience and persistence. My grandfather used to tell me that the secret to success in any undertaking in life is “remember the 3-Ps”: patience, persistence, and perseverance.
So as the enthusiasm and optimism the New Year bring to change plans and resolutions to pursue them wanes, remember Kanter’s Law…or at least my grandfathers' admonishment…and as we used to say in the 60s, keep on truckin’!
