A Resolution (Making it STICK)
Success with a new commitment takes more than willpower.
First, congratulations on your well-placed intentions—whether it’s a New Start resolution or a fresh health commitment. You’ve opened the door; the question now is how to keep it open. We’re often told to rely on willpower, but willpower is a limited resource—especially on days you’re tired, stressed, or just plain exhausted.
60-second priming you can use anytime (the Powerful P’s)
Plan (10s): Note one tiny action you could do next (2–5 minutes counts).
Picture (20s): Imagine finishing it and feeling quietly proud.
Pair (20s): Link it to what matters—steadiness, clearer head, independence.
Permission (10s): Tell yourself: If energy is low, I’ll do the smallest version—and it still counts.
There’s also a more reliable fuel than willpower alone. Social emotions—pride, gratitude, and compassion—help intentions become habits because they change how effort feels right now, not just what we plan in the abstract. As psychologist David DeSteno argues in Emotional Success (and in his CBC presentation), these emotions increase persistence and make follow-through more likely.
In the sections that follow, we’ll look at each in turn: how pride reinforces your identity as someone who shows up (even in small ways), how gratitude ties today’s effort to who and what you value, and how compassion turns setbacks into adjustments rather than abandonments. No gimmicks—just a better fuel mix for sticking with what you started.
3 Social Emotions that compliment will power in pursuing goals:
1. The Power of Pride: This is the well-placed pride which is authentic to your own abilities – not to be confused with what DeSteno calls “arrogant hubris pride.” The obnoxious bragging kind. According to DeSteno, there is increased personal investment that is directly related to the pride from the social acclaim of friends and respected professionals, that is, “positive” peer support. This authentic pride is at the foundation of personal pressure to stick with it, that is, independent of will power, yet assists it. In the lab, participants taking pride in a task became increasingly diligent in the pursuit of that challenging task, even when that task is of little personal value. Professor DeSteno demonstrates that adopting pride in conjunction with will power, can magnify the results over and above using will power alone.
2. The Power of Gratitude: This one is simple. It is based on ones attitude. Experiencing gratitude and satisfaction minimizes the lure of instant gratification (that inner voice saying sleep in or I am too tired today) at the expense of the long term goal. To demonstrate this DeSteno describes an experiment: “Take $17 now or delay taking it and in a year get $100.” Impatience and immediate gratification wins out and participants chose taking the $17 dollars now. However, if participants performed the exercise of taking only 5 minutes and recalling something they were grateful for, making themselves feel grateful, the self-control more than doubled. In addition to this, others have shown People who feel grateful, value their future goals more dearly. Similarly in a smoking study feeling and recalling an emotion made their goal of not smoking easier to accomplish than just enlisting will power to fight the urge. The take-home message: Contemplate and express gratitude for parts of your life, even gratitude that you can exercise. Gratitude for your opportunities.
People who feel grateful, value their future goals more dearly
3. The Power of Compassion: Go easy on yourself! By exercising compassion, we become more tolerant when an “oops” occurs. With this new-found tolerance, we can direct our energy into improving next time, rather than beat ourselves down. Let’s face it, life happens and as long as we are committed, we will persist toward the positive outcomes that we desire.
To summarize: The employment of the above Three Musketeers of social emotions in supporting your goals cannot be overstated. At the start explore these three emotions while starting to pursue your goal:
Pride: Make it personal. Internalize it.
Gratitude: Just taking time to be grateful results in placing increased value on future goals.
Compassion: Helps you get right back to it after hitting a bump in the road. Forgiveness!
Acknowledgments: a 2018 CBC interview with Dr. DeSteno, and his book, Emotional Success: The Power of Gratitude, Compassion and Pride, edits by Steve Payne.
Dr. PJ Rawlek
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