Willpower doesn’t work. Here’s what does.

Have you already broken your New Year’s resolution yet? If not, you will soon. And when you do, don’t blame yourself. The problem isn’t with you, but with New Year’s resolutions themselves. Resolutions don’t work for several reasons. One of them is they are based on willpower.

Willpower sounds great on the surface. We are the result of our choices, and making better choices leads to better results. There are two problems with willpower. The first is that it doesn’t address what happens when the choices aren’t easy to make. You may have committed to going to the gym three times a week. But it means putting on workout clothes and driving to the gym, and that’s before you even start the workout. And once you do, you have to shower, change, and drive to your job. That’s a lot of work just to work out, and there are days when it just doesn’t seem worth the effort. Eventually, you won’t bother with it at all.

And when you don’t stick with the resolution, it leads to the second problem with willpower. That’s the moral judgement we attach to it. You can make the bold (and unrealistic) declaration, “I will give up on all sugar!” When you stick to this plan, you feel virtuous—especially because your virtue is tied to deprivation. And what happens when you have a piece of candy? You feel like a moral failure for backsliding on your resolution. That’s when…