Why Do So Many of Our New Year’s Resolutions Fail?
We are almost 1 month into 2025. How are your New Year’s resolutions going?
Most New Year’s resolutions fail. Not for lack of trying (but yes, sometimes for lack of trying)! Usually, we hit roadblocks such as procrastination, fear of failing or not having a clear plan of how to achieve the goal.
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Top 3 Reasons New Years Resolutions Fail:
Your conscious needs to change before your behaviour can change.
Change is hard, and as a result, Terri Bly, licensed Clinical Psychologist says, “the pain of not changing has to be greater than the pain of changing for us to really change.”
Many of our resolutions tend to involve things we feel we SHOULD do, rather than what we really want to do. We need to WANT to achieve this goal rather than set it because it sounds and looks good.
We often stay the same out of habit, but change can become a habit too—if we stick with it. However, when we set big, overwhelming New Year's resolutions, there is usually an expectation that we’re going to turn over an entirely new leaf on January 1st. However,?real change?requires incremental changes so we can make ourselves comfortable with the change and ensure the change becomes habitual.?It isn’t going to happen all of a sudden, but more likely a slow process over a longer period of time.
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You don’t have an accountability structure to help you sustain change
Big changes and important goals don’t just happen. They require sustained action (a different kind of action to what you have been doing) to move you forward towards the goal, despite challenges, push backs and struggles.?
The sustained action usually takes you out of your comfort zone and out of your habitual way of doing things. Some people can hold themselves accountable on their own. However, the bigger the goal, the more of a necessity it is to have outside accountability, especially as time goes on and the excitement of a new goal fades and gets tougher.
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You are scared of and resistant to achieving this big goal
You may consciously want to achieve a certain goal, but if you are internally scared to death of bringing the goal to life, you won’t let yourself achieve it.
The biggest fear that many feel is that there is something fundamentally wrong with ourselves and we are undeserving of the great success. This fear causes us to hold back from fulfilling the potential.
Another fear is leaving behind people who have been there for us. We pull back from greater success for fear of ending up alone or leaving behind people we care for.
A 3rd fear is of being a burden – the idea of more success brings a greater burden to ourselves and others.
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As a result, instead of setting one big New Year's resolution that people may quickly come to believe is unattainable, New Year’s might be a good time to create a timeline for the next year that sets a variety of small milestones that will help us get to a bigger goal over time.?
This will work better with our?psychology?and make it far more likely that the changes we make actually last.
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References:
Forbes (2019) The Top 3 Reasons New Year’s Resolutions Fail And How Yours Can Succeed
Vinney (2024) The Psychology Behind Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
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