Microresolutions: Sometimes You Have to Think Small to Think Big

If you want to demoralize yourself for the New Year, make a resolution! You’ll lose weight. You’ll quit smoking. You’ll get thin by summer. You’ll be a better person.

Then, when you inevitably fail, you will feel powerless to make real progress in your life and realize your goals. 

On the other hand, you can consider the advice that Caroline Arnold provides in her new book Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently. 

What is a microresolution?

Arnold is a Wall Street innovator who built the auction system for Google’s IPO. In her book, Arnold offers up her life as a case study, contrasting her career successes with her resolution failures – from going to the gym regularly to spending more time with her family. After a particularly painful flop, Arnold writes, she decided to assign herself a small but meaningful behavioral change, and in the process “stumbled onto a method for making targeted commitments that succeeded virtually every time.”

To find out how to make a microresolution, you can read an excerpt from Arnold’s book here.

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