Keeping your New Year’s Resolutions

Looking for tips for keeping your New Year’s resolutions?

Look no further:

• Open the curtains and let in the natural light. We not only process information more effectively in natural light, our cognitive performance is better, but we also get along better with other people when we’re bathed in natural light – which is often good for keeping resolutions.  Too dark for natural light to help? Turn on some more lights, make your space brighter, you’ll have more self-control.
• You’ll feel more powerful in a space that features cool colours, which gives you added strength to live in line with your resolutions. Research also shows we’re less impulsive in mainly cool-coloured spaces than we are than warmer-coloured ones.
• Bring down the visual clutter/disorder where you are by straightening things up and putting away things you’re not using (managing visual complexity is discussed here; also search for “visual complexity top right,) or try our new i-Journal to create your own report!).
• Set up a piece of art with a face with eyes so that those eyes seem to be looking at you as you’re tempted to transgress, for example, to make less healthy food selections. Landscape art that’s refreshing to look at, described here, LINK can also help with keeping resolutions.
• Even better, use your own eyes. If you can see yourself in a mirror you’re more likely to behave (but also more likely to feel stressed).
• If someone else is around, make eye contact with them.
• Mentally refresh to keep a tired brain from screwing up—how to use design to revitalize your brain is discussed here
• Get rid of the random stressors—the too high temperature, the annoying sound, the itchy texture—they all reduce the self-control you need to toe the line with your resolutions.

And remember, perceptions prevail over reality in our world and placebos exist and can be powerful—so, if something seems to be working for you, helping you achieve your objectives, it probably is, and if people you share a space with believe something about it they will act accordingly.  Also, sensory experiences can combine in interesting ways to influence perceptions—for example, we feel warmer in a space that features warm colours and cooler in ones where cooler shades are more plentiful.  Also, people in better moods generally feel better about the design they’re experiencing even if their good mood has nothing to do with that design (for example, they’re happy because they just got a raise at work).  People in a better mood also find annoying stuff in their world, such as unpleasant sounds, less unpleasant.