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Reasons Most People Fail at
Their New Year’s Resolutions
(and How You Can Beat the Odds) 5Who doesn’t love getting a fresh start? For many people, January is the
perfect time to shake off old vices and create some positive new habits.
But good intentions don’t always translate into actual change.
By February, the majority of resolution-setters have abandoned
their new goals and fallen back into their old ways.
Why does this happen? There are a number of common reasons
why most people don’t stick to their New Year’s resolutions. If you
make one of these mistakes, you’ll probably find yourself giving up
on your resolutions, too.
1. NOT BEING REALISTIC
Shooting for the moon isn’t always the best strategy. In fact,
sometimes it can prevent you from even getting off the ground. Realistically,
almost no one can learn a new language in six months
or become a runner overnight, but many people make overly-optimistic
resolutions like these every year. If you’re too ambitious
with your New Year’s resolutions, you’ll end up getting burned out
before January is over.
2. MAKING TOO MANY RESOLUTIONS
Even small resolutions can be hard to keep if you make too
many of them. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if you try to change
more than one or two habits at a time. Besides that, making a
lot of different resolutions is a sign that you haven’t put much
thought into each one, and it’s easy to give up on resolutions that
aren’t meaningful to you.
3. NOT SETTING SPECIFIC GOALS
If your resolution is something like “lose weight” or “get better
grades,” you aren’t likely to succeed. Why? Because these goals are
vague and hard to track. Useful goals are specific and measurable
- for instance, “lose 10 pounds by March” or “get an A in calculus.”
4. NOT MAKING A PLAN
Along with a specific goal, you need a plan. How are you going
to turn your resolutions into reality? Many people fail at keeping
their resolutions because they don’t turn their goals into specific
action steps.
5. GIVING UP TOO SOON
Perseverance is important for forming any new habit in your life,
but many people throw in the towel on their resolutions as soon as
something goes wrong. It’s important to stay flexible and to avoid
getting discouraged too quickly, even if your resolutions are tougher
to keep than you thought they’d be. Adjusting a goal to be more
realistic is better than giving up on it completely.
How Can You Beat the Odds
and Keep Your Resolutions?
Failing to keep New Year’s resolutions is very common - but the
good news is that it’s not inevitable. A minority of people do stick
to their resolutions every year, and if you’d like to be one of them,
there are some things you can do to increase your odds of success.
1. SET ONLY RESOLUTIONS THAT
ARE MEANINGFUL TO YOU.
If you don’t really care about your resolutions, you won’t stick
to them. Avoid choosing this year’s resolutions based on what you
think will impress other people. Instead, choose goals that you’re
deeply invested in.
2. PLAN FOR THE LONG HAUL.
Many people think of New Year’s resolutions as a quick fix for the
previous year’s problems and bad habits. In reality, though, it takes
time to create lasting changes in your life. Make your resolutions
with the knowledge that you’ll need to work on them consistently,
and adopt the mindset that if you fall off the wagon, you’ll climb
right back on.
3. TAKE BABY STEPS.
Every big achievement is made up of a series of small action
steps. Break your goals down ahead of time, so you won’t get overwhelmed
when the new year rolls around. When you transform a
big resolution into a lot of small, doable steps, you’ll always know
what to do next.
4. TRACK AND CELEBRATE YOUR PROGRESS.
One of the best ways to stay on track is to look back at how far
you’ve come. It might be hard to see how your small victories matter
from moment to moment, but over time, those little wins really
add up. Keep a log of all your progress, and reward yourself for
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meeting milestones on the way to your main goal.
The Takeaway
New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap because most people give up
on them after a few weeks. But if you love setting goals for yourself
at the start of the year, don’t give up on the idea of resolutions just
yet. Resolutions can actually be a very useful tool. By taking the right
approach and avoiding these five common mistakes, you might find
it easier than you expected to keep your resolutions all year long.