How to use your personality type to set New Year’s resolutions you can actually achieve

When you think about it, a New Year’s resolution is actually a pretty drastic step to take in the quest to change your behavior. After all, if there is something you want to do differently, you start by just trying to act differently in the future than you did in the past. You only need a resolution when you have tried to make that change, and it just won’t stick.

Part of what is likely to make a behavior hard to change is that your personality gets in the way. What psychologists call “personality” is a reflection of your typical motivation in different situations. The hardest behaviors for you to change tend to be the ones that work against that typical motivation.

Let’s take a look at a few common personality traits, the kinds of resolutions you’re most likely to want to make, and a some suggestions for how to be more successful next year.

The largest differences in personality between people are reflected in what are called the Big Five traits. They go by the acronym OCEAN: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Openness to Experience

Openness to experience reflects your motivation to engage with new things. People who are high in openness tend to embrace new opportunities, while those who are low in openness often stick with what is familiar. A common resolution for people who are low in openness is that they would like to try more new things in the new year. This often happens, because they feel like they are stuck in a rut.

Just committing to this goal is often not enough. You have to recognize that you are motivated to engage with what you know rather than doing new things. That means that you have to be mindful about engaging in new things. It can help to find a friend who is high in openness to introduce you to things you have not tried before. Often, the social pressure can help you to overcome your desire to revert back to what you normally do. It’s also useful to remember that the worst case when you try something new is that you don’t like it that much, while the best case is that you discover something else to add to your repertoire.

Extroversion

Extroverts are motivated to bask in the glow of attention from other people. Introverts don’t love the spotlight, but prefer to work behind the scenes. Introverts often feel like they need to spend more time in big social situations than they do, and may resolve to get out more or to network more in business.

A happy middle ground for introverts is to work to meet more people in the new year, but to do it in ways that are motivationally comfortable. Rather than going to parties or big networking events, which can feel overwhelming and lead to a desire to run for the hills, stick with small engagements.

Email someone you don’t know well and grab a cup of coffee with them. Try going to lunch with one or two colleagues a few times a week. Look for an activity that you enjoy and do it more socially. Instead of running alone, for example, join a running group. That way, you achieve the goal of broadening your social circle without having to put yourself in an anxiety-provoking situation.

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness reflects your tendency to complete the things you start. People high in conscientiousness also tend to be rule-followers, while those who are lower in conscientiousness treat rules as mere guidelines.

If you’re high in conscientiousness, you may find yourself getting annoyed at others who do not do things the way you’d like to. You may resolve to be less judgmental next year. That’s hard to do, though, because you notice all the lapses in other people’s work. You can help yourself succeed in this task by reminding yourself that not everyone is as motivated to be as attentive to detail as you are. In addition, pay attention to the circumstances that other people are in. Sometimes, they do not follow through on a commitment because they have more significant priorities.

If you are low in conscientiousness, then you may find many resolutions hard to stick to. For you, it can be helpful to fill out a journal to support your attempts to change behavior. You might also want to find another person who is good at the behavior you’re trying to change and use them as an accountability partner to outsource some of the work you need to do to succeed.

Agreeableness

Agreeableness reflects your motivation to be liked by others. Those high in agreeableness prioritize being liked by others. Those low in agreeableness are not strongly motivated to have others like them.

A paradox of being high in agreeableness is that you are liked, but you are not always respected, because you often do not stand up for yourself and uphold standards you think are important. Leaders who are high in agreeableness may find it difficult to give constructive criticism or tell employees that they have not met key standards.

To become better at giving other people bad news, it can be valuable to develop a script for criticism. Rather than using the infamous (and ineffective) “shit sandwich” in which you slip the criticism in between two compliments, you can use the XYZ approach. When a direct report does something wrong, you can say, “You did X; it caused Y; and in the future I would like you to do Z.” This formulation is easy to remember and succeeds, because it is direct, to the point, and focuses on someone’s actions rather than their motivations.

An added advantage of this frame is that people often take it well. One way to improve at delivering critical feedback is to recognize that when you do, it’s often appreciated by others, so that you’re actually solidifying a relationship rather than wrecking it when you coach people through situations in which they did not succeed.

Neuroticism

Finally, neuroticism reflects the energy flowing through your motivational system. Because people high in neuroticism have a lot of motivational energy, they experience high highs and low lows. In addition, they tend to focus on potential problems and end up feeling a lot of anxiety.

Many neurotic individuals will get angry or upset at work when something goes wrong, and that can damage relationships with colleagues. To minimize the damage that can come from a powerful emotional reaction, work on skills to lower your emotional energy when you find yourself becoming frustrated. Take deep breaths. Ask for a little time to disengage from a situation. Respond slowly rather than immediately. These techniques can help to lower the temperature when you’re frustrated.

If you find yourself consumed by worry about things that are out of your control, then try writing about the situations that concern you. Expressive writing like this helps to get the factors that lead to worry outside of your head, which makes you less likely to engage in a cycle of thoughts that maintain your anxiety.