7 Reasons your Resolutions may Fail and 7 Solutions to Ensure they Don't!

Spoiler alert - you’re doing them all wrong!

According to Chat GPT, these are the most documented reasons people’s New Year’s Resolutions fail:

1. Unrealistic Goals

Setting overly ambitious or vague resolutions, such as "lose 50 pounds in two months" or "become a millionaire," makes them unachievable.

2. Lack of Specificity

Goals that are too broad, like "get fit" or "save money," lack clear direction and measurable steps to track progress.

3. Absence of a Plan

People often fail to break resolutions into actionable, step-by-step plans, leading to a lack of guidance on how to proceed.

4. Lack of Accountability

Without external or internal accountability mechanisms, such as sharing goals with others or tracking progress, motivation can wane.

5. Poor Timing or Commitment

Making resolutions during a busy or stressful time of year, like the holidays, can hinder consistent follow-through.

6. Underestimating the Power of Habits

Failing to address underlying habits that conflict with the resolution—like maintaining unhealthy eating patterns while trying to lose weight—makes sustained change difficult.

7. Psychological Factors

Factors like low self-efficacy, negative self-talk, or a fear of failure can lead to self-sabotage and abandoning goals prematurely.

I agree with these, albeit I would suggest these all stem from one underlying challenge:

“YOU’RE DOING YOUR RESOLUTIONS ALL WRONG”.

Don’t believe me??

Answer this question:

“Did you start with a goal?”

If the answer is “yes”- you’re doing your resolutions all wrong. If your answer is no, it depends what you started with.

Here’s a few underlying factors driving each of the documented issues above:

Underlying issue #1: Emotions may lead us to set unrealistic, generic goals, without an actionable plan to achieve them. I’d go further to suggest that often people pick the wrong goals, because they’re looking at things the same way. Hope, ambition, belief are incredibly powerful motivators- when pointed in the right direction and towards the right destination. However, they have to be grounded in our authentic selves and built with small intentional steps, upon our current reality (truth).

Underlying issue #2: We don’t clearly define and embrace both commitment and accountability. These are two sides of the same magic coin we can benefit from. Setting and celebrating achievement of small milestones, sharing your plans with people you trust and building a support team with different roles to fill in your gaps, can really help.?

Underlying issue #3: Psychological factors and headwind habits need to become our starting point not our performance blocker. They are part of our current reality. Part of our motivation. We need to understand what’s driving them, why they exist and to what extent we can mitigate the cause (eliminate, minimize, accept). Without this initial self reflection, awareness and acceptance, we have a spongy foundation that’s not strong enough to support the build towards our new ambitions.

Solutions: yes- this is how I recommend you make resolutions that last!

1. Reflect before you project: Self awareness directly correlates to your capacity to change. Who are you at your best? What drives and motivates you? When are you in flow? How do you deliver the most impact? What psychological factors and headwinds may get in your way?

2. Convert passions into principles: Looking at past experiences, what are the top takeaways you want to pull forward, that define you at your best. Express those as behaviors in terms of what they mean to you by how you exhibit them. Write them down.

3. Establish principles as the pillars for your plan: Build your plan on top of and in alignment with your principles. Anything outside of those should be questioned unless it’s aspirational. If a plan’s built upon best self contributions, its likelihood of surpassing success to significance is substantially higher.?

4. Consider your impact: What impact do you want to make this year on Me (that’s you), We (friends, family, colleagues) and World (anything beyond your we). This one’s hard but with it, you’ll find, embrace and benefit from meaning and fulfillment, that will continue to propel you forward.

5. Align your ambitions: With the above, you have a different and better perspective from which you can see the right goals. That is, the goals that activate what matters most in your life, that build upon your principles, align to your impact. Make these SMART and you’ve blended the right amount of emotion with rationale, to get you there.

6. Embrace your energy: Understanding what energizes vs depletes you and why, enables you to swim downstream, achieving milestones quicker. This accelerates progress, builds momentum and amplifies impact. Momentum is the pointy proof that smashes through fear, and self doubt.

7. Pick your People (wisely): Sharing elements of your plan with people you trust creates accountability. Building a support team with roles for folks who fill in some of your gaps, or challenge your perspective, reduces failure. Ask for feedback and feed forward (advice). Thank people for it. Embrace and action it. Demonstrate and share your progress.

As you pick your people, consider me! Even join me for free on Jan 14th for “Converting Intentions into Impact”. I’ll be with @Samantha Kris, a fellow Real Leaders Inc. Top Exec Coach, values and planning guru.

Link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1115918996759?aff=oddtdtcreator

Come on- we can crush 2025….let's do it together!

Best,

Mark

PurposeFused

#Purpose #Passion #Performance #Planning #Priorities #Perspective #PurposeCoach #Impact #Resolutions #2025