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Like millions of other people around the world, I spent last Friday night huddled around a cozy fireplace with my wife and a group of good friends. We watched the ball drop on TV twice, laughed a lot, and listened repeatedly to Prince (can I call him that again, or is he still an unpronounceable glyph?)  belt out 1999 way too many times for a 2010-11 New Year’s Eve party.  Eventually, the conversation turned to the time-honored tradition of resolving to do something in the coming year that eight out of ten of us will give up on before the kickoff at the Super Bowl.

But this year could be different.  Fascinating research by psychologists Linda Houser-Marko and Ken Sheldon paves a new path for successfully achieving your resolution this year.  Contrary to popular wisdom, setting goals isn’t enough. If you’re serious about  making progress this year, follow these 3 simple steps:

1. List Your Possible Resolutions.  Make a quick list of the things you might want to do differently this year.  Anything goes.

2. Rank Your Resolutions. Picking the right resolutions–those that represent your values and interests, rather than what the latest commercial tells you should want to do–is critically important.  So, rank your goals from highest to lowest according to how well they fit the real you.

3. Merge Your Resolutions with Your Identity.  Turn your top two goals into Decider Statements.  These are two word phrases that put you in the driver’s seat.  For instance, if your resolution is “to have a more positive outlook” then you would write a decider statement of “positive outlooker.”  A resolution to “enjoy more time with my children” becomes “children-enjoyer.”  If you resolve to “maintain a healthy weight this year,” then your statement would be “weight-maintainer.”

This technique gives you double the bang for your buck.  People who use it often achieve not only the specific goal from which they derived their Decider Statement, they also achieve indirectly related goals months and years into the future.  For example, a Decider Statement about health such as “regular-exerciser” is likely to help you eat better and become healthier in general.

Why it Works

Houser-Marko believes this approach is so powerful because decider statements free us from our obsessive future-fixation.  They focus on doing something now instead of arriving at some future destination.  It’s also not about enjoying the activity.  For many of us, improving ourselves usually involves doing something we don’t initially consider to be fun. For example, jogging or cutting out sugar isn’t something we typically get excited about (even though we like the outcome), but we will persist at it if we believe we simply are a “healthy-eater” or a “regular exerciser.”  For someone like my wife who consider herself a runner, she runs even when she doesn’t feel like it, because its just who she is.

So give it a try.  Other than weight, failure and bad habits, what have you got to lose?

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