The New Year is a natural time for self-reflection, an organic space in which we can assess what works and what doesn’t in our lives, and then act on those insights.
Whether you’ve already made your resolutions, ditched them in perpetuity, or are still in contemplation – this newsletter is for you.
By now we have learned that most (if not all!) New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside. So how can we harness this meaningful moment in ways that might actually help us make changes that we can sustain? The science-backed answer is deceptively simple: Give yourself permission. The question now becomes, why is giving ourselves permission influential for our choices?
How Permission Works
To answer that question, I look to the research by Ethan Kross on “self-distancing,” stepping outside of our thoughts and actions to observe ourselves as an outsider.
Thinking about our decisions, actions, and permissions as an observer gives us a wider perspective on the issue under consideration. Research suggests that this psychological tactic helps us use our rational mind, reduces emotional reactivity, and facilitates better behavioral and emotion regulation. So, in its very essence, when we “give ourselves permission” we automatically create that desirable cognitive distance.
Now that you understand the value of giving yourself permission, what might you want to put on your Permission Slip?
You should write your Permission Slip according to the mindset shift you’d like to create in the coming year. However, in this newsletter I invite you create your Permission Slip using what I call The Motivation MAP: a scientifically supported exercise-message framework I’ve been using with my coaching clients for decades, as described below.
Using The Motivation Map to Create Your Permission Slip
Over thirty years ago, I dedicated my career to using research and practice to help people escape the vicious cycle of lifestyle-change failure that keeps people from enjoying the multitude of mind-body-spirit benefits that sustainable behavior delivers. In honor of that anniversary, I recently published a paper for academics summarizing my three-part message methodology for creating a comprehensive shift in mindset to support sustained exercise motivation.
The Motivation MAP is a simple message framework that guides individuals to internalize three specific motivation-supportive messages: Meaning, Awareness, and Permission to Prioritize – MAP!
I designed this message triad to help people internalize 3 core beliefs underlying sustainable motivation and behavior change. (If you’ve read No Sweat, these will be very familiar to you.) These messages are now being used in new NIH-funded research, including how to achieve similar mindset shifts with eating. I’ve seen the consistently positive response these messages have gotten for exercising so it’s been exciting to see the similar response they are getting in our new App + Coaching eating intervention.
Message #1: “Move in ways that feel good to you.”
This message directly challenges our natural, but non-optimal, tendency to choose physical activities that feel like “shoulds” because they aim to burn calories or to achieve some gold standard criterion that we’d prefer to avoid. It supports high-quality motivation through cultivating autonomy and positive affective associations with movement. When we like what we’re doing, research suggests we want to do it again and again.
Here is an example of how I would create my own Permission Slip for this message. (Note that by addressing myself in the third person, I automatically create self-distance):
“Michelle, you can choose to move in ways that feel good to you. There is mounting research that positive feelings during exercise and movement foster high-quality motivation that drives decisions to keep exercising. So you can stop picking the punishing physical activities that science suggests (and you know!) make you dread exercising. Make 2025 the year that you discover ways to move that feel good to you. And Michelle, remember that this is process of experimenting and learning, so have fun trying out different physical activities.”
Message #2: “Everything counts. It all adds up.”
This seemingly simplistic message is dense with science-based permission. Decades of socialization (think: brainwashing) has educated many of us to believe that in order for exercise “to count” it has to take high effort, make us sweat, and lead us to hate doing it. It’s a bullet train to the all-or-nothing thinking I wrote about in The Joy Choice. However, mounting data suggest that (for the most part) any movement is better than none, especially for those who are not regularly active.
Here is an example of how I would create my own Permission Slip for this message:
“Michelle, life can be chaotic and you won’t always be able to take the time you need to do what you planned to do. So when you can’t take the full walk you intended to take, or go to the class you signed up for, just remind yourself that everything counts – it all adds up; take the 4, 11, or 17 minutes that you do have to move in the ways that feel good to you.”
Message #3: “Give yourself permission to prioritize self-care.”
My very first study in 1994 showed me how critical it is for people to think about physical activity as self-care, and to give themselves permission to prioritize their self-care. In fact, it was this unintended discovery that launched my entire career, one that I celebrate today. While it might seem simple, this third message is more complicated than the other two because it taps into our deeper feelings of self-worth and core priorities. Still, we can start to address this issue with strategic messages.
Here is an example of how I would create my own Permission Slip for this message:
“Michelle, it’s time to give yourself permission to better prioritize your own self-care. Yes, there’s always an unending to-do list and people you love and want to help. You are not opting out of any of this by caring for yourself. In fact, you will have more energy for all of the projects and people that you love when you take time to renew yourself, even just for small moments. And Michelle, it doesn’t have to be perfect! Remember that message #2 gave you permission to do anything and count it, because it all adds up.”
Turning New Year’s Resolutions on Their Head
The messages we tell ourselves are far more than just words: They are the gateway to our perceptions, beliefs, and experiences.
Let’s take a huge step back and think about why giving ourselves permission might be so radically different than making New Year’s resolutions? According to Uselessetymology.com, the word “resolution” comes from the Latin solvere “to loosen, release, explain”. In seeming contrast, the term ‘resolution’ used in “New Year’s resolutions” draws from “resolute”, the determined, teeth-gritting meaning of the word. In 2023, I wrote about the potential downsides that come from feeling like we need to grit and commit to make a change. In a nutshell, when we feel like we ‘have to’ do something, it easily converts that something into a chore that our rebellious brain is motivated to ditch.
Although the messages in The Motivation MAP were designed to be used together, they do represent distinct concepts. So as you begin to write up your Permission Slip, feel free to experiment with one, two, or all of them. If these three areas are not of interest to you for your 2025 personal project, then identify another one that is, and design your Permission Slip for that.
In contrast to contracting around a resolution that we are determined to achieve this year (finally, damn it!), when we give ourselves permission to grow something new in our lives, we loosen up both our psyches and our lives, creating a wholehearted opening within which our new Permission(s) can enter and take root.
Ironically as I was writing this newsletter, I received an email from someone named Julia that couldn’t be a better exemplar for this New Year’s newsletter. She gave me permission to share part of her email with you:
Just the other day I was really struggling to find the motivation to work out. All I wanted was to curl up in a ball on the couch. The barrier to getting myself in motion seemed far too high. Then I remembered and gave myself permission to think that everything counts – and I realized I could just take a walk. A walk! It sounds simple, but I don’t just take walks. I’m always forcing myself to do a “real” workout, something that will build muscle or my aerobic capacity. And 99% of the time I love it. But walking and fresh air were exactly what I needed in that moment to pull myself out of the negative headspace I was in. The feeling I had as I laced up my sneakers and headed out the door was a freedom that I didn’t know I was missing out on. As a very active person with a love for exercise, I still find it hard to get moving sometimes. I listened to what my body really needed in that moment, and I will continue to open up my options in all scenarios. [If you don’t know this by now, I love getting emails about how these science-based-sustainable-change strategies are working (or not) in your life and/or the lives of your patients or clients.]
Your Permission Slip
Whatever you choose for your Permission Slip, write out your own personal script, one that is authentic to you. Make sure to insert your first name at least once in your script to engage the observer within yourself and create that science-backed strategic distance.
Print out your Permission Slip or make it your screen saver, and regularly read it with intention. Because our behavior follows our beliefs, learning to believe these internal scripts is a fundamental part of creating changes in behavior that can be sustained. Above all, give yourself permission to be patient and kind toward yourself as you move through this process, and to have fun experimenting with these ideas!
My New Year and the Next 30!
As I begin the next 30 years on my path of understanding and creating sustainable changes in lifestyle behaviors and self-care I have taken stock: My personal charge is to keep learning as I continue to use research to impact relevant policy and scale research-backed systems and strategies for use by consumers, practitioners, and other researchers.
To amplify the impact of The Motivation MAP, it is being widely circulated among behavioral scientists and physical activity researchers. In addition, I’ll be speaking at a number of conferences in the coming years to help further disseminate this scientifically supported message triad and its underlying mindset-shifting methods. First up in 2025, I will be doing featured presentations at the American College of Sports Medicine in Atlanta and at the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity in Lake Tahoe. If you attend, please come by and say hi! I’d love to meet you or reconnect.
Thank you for your continued interest in reading my newsletter. In the coming year, keep your eyes out for exciting new research on a topic that has profound implications for the way we and others think about and maintain changes in behaviors!
Please forward this blog post to others who share your interest in the science-based “how-to’s” of creating lasting changes in behavior that can survive in the real world.
Copyright © Segar, Michelle.