“88 percent of people who set New Year resolutions fail them,” reports Dr. Asim A Shah from Baylor College of Medicine (BMC), by the second Friday in January, which has fittingly coined the name ‘quitter’s day’”.
After my holiday eating of rich and indulgent foods, I felt like I needed to run five miles to burn it off. After reflecting on my recent eating habits and both my Thanksgiving and winter breaks full of lazy days watching the Lions and Christmas movies, I decided to make my New Year’s Resolutions to be a healthier human. But I, along with many others, worry that after just a short time, this resolution will fall to the back of my mind to be remembered next January. In order to avoid that happening, I decided to do some research into why people often fail to accomplish their goals. According to my findings, these are the top four reasons why you will fail at your goals for the new year.
- You have the wrong motives.
Sometimes the reason why people fail their resolutions isn’t because of lack of accountability or because it is too broad, but because the goal that you set for yourself isn’t actually what you want your goal to be. “But how can that be? I set it,” you may ask. Since New Years’ resolutions are such a popular tradition, people may just set a goal for themselves because everyone else is doing it. Or, people may set their goals based on the society around them. For example, if you want to exercise more just because your friends are doing it, it is not actually your goal; it is society making you feel like you have to do it.
Jennifer Kowalski, a licensed professional counselor at Thriveworks in Cheshire, CT, says, “In order to change a behavior, you have to be uncomfortable and nobody wants to be uncomfortable.” Would you sacrifice comfort to accomplish your goal? It is also important to realize that people feel obligated to make resolutions at the new year because of its popularity but also because people think of it as a fresh start. Something that you can think about to decide if you like your goal is to think, would I set this goal if it wasn’t the new year? If the answer is no, it is probably not a goal you are really passionate about. So, after learning about this, I asked myself: Do I really want to achieve this goal? Will it make me happy if I accomplish it? Is the effort to accomplish my goal worth the discomfort I will face? Would I make this a goal for myself if it was just one random day? Once you think about those things, then you can decide to keep your goal, get rid of it all together (making a New Years’ Resolution is not mandatory), or edit it to make it something you want to do for yourself.
- Your goals are unachievable/ idealistic.
Everyone becomes an optimist around the new year and makes idealistic goals for themselves that they hope to achieve, emphasis on hope. BCM comments on this problem and recommends that starting with a short-term goal can make accomplishing a long-term goal easier. Terri Bly of Ellie Mental Health in Mendota Heights, MN, says, “As humans we’re not wired to make big, sweeping changes,” and she’s right! By setting smaller goals, you can feel rewarded for accomplishing many small things instead of tackling one huge task.
Instead of making a huge goal like losing 80 pounds, make small adjustments to your lifestyle in order to achieve it. For example, limit carb intake, track calories, make an exercise plan, or do some research for what will work best for you. Bly gives another example of how to improve your goal, “If we want to be able to meet our goal of, say, learning a language, we need to set smaller goals along the way to be successful, like devoting five minutes a day to learning a new word or phrase.”
- Your goal is too broad.
According to a YouGov survey of 1,000 people, the top five New Year’s resolutions are: Saving more money, being happy, exercising more, improving physical health, and eating healthier. My resolution was “be healthier” which definitely fits in the category of “being too broad” along with the five on the list. Another example of setting a goal like “be happier” is basically impossible as it is such a broad concept and not even really able to be defined on what that means. If you want to live a more optimistic and grateful life, you can set goals based on that. For example, journaling everyday about what you look forward to tomorrow or next week and doing mindfulness meditation once a week are activities that can contribute to overall happiness. If you want to be happier in a different way, say, spend more time with the people you love or take up a new hobby that makes you happy, set an achievable goal related to that. Dr. Barb Lesniak, executive director of social sciences at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), advises making a SMART goal for your New Years’ Resolution: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely. After learning about this, I decided to amend my resolution from “be healthier” to making two more specific goals: “exercise four days a week” and “have less than 25 grams of added sugar a day.” By doing these two things, I will inherently be healthier but can feel more accomplished each week instead of having an ambiguous goal that I will never really accomplish.
- You will lose motivation.
It is super easy to declare your resolution, but how can you actually accomplish it? The reason why quitters day is a known thing is because so many people fail to hold themselves accountable for their goals and ultimately forget or give up after a few weeks. I worry that this will be me, so I found a few ways to help hold myself accountable that I will try to use to make my goals happen. “You can use a friend, family member, trainer, counselor, or anyone else you choose as your accountability partner. If you’re not comfortable with that, use a journal to hold yourself accountable,” Lesniak advises. BCM concurs, “Don’t tackle your resolution alone,” they say. When you have a counterpart in achieving your goal or someone else to help you track it, it motivates you more because you feel less alone, and you have another person to encourage you to persevere and not give up. If you don’t want to have another person involved in your goals, you can hold yourself accountable by tracking your progress. By starting a log of what you have accomplished, you can motivate yourself because it will feel good to visually see how much you have done. You can do this daily, weekly, or monthly depending on the goal. For many, the issue is not that they don’t hold themselves accountable but that they give up too easily. If their goal is to avoid soda, they can’t resist a Dr. Pepper at dinner one time, they might think, “I failed, it’s not even worth it anymore.” This way of thinking is what causes so many people to give up. Making a big change is hard and it’s inevitable that you will mess up, but you can’t let that discourage you. My goal of exercising four days a week is easily attainable and trackable because I already have scheduled activities, but for my other goal of eating less than 25 grams of added sugar a day, I am going to log my sugar intake. I already have a planner with a habit tracker in it so I will log my goal there, and I will remember that if I go over 25 grams it’s okay because I am human.
At the end of the day, making a resolution is a big task and hard to accomplish, and I hope that you can take even one thing away from my research to help you in your endeavors.
My findings: click these links to learn more.
The Psychology Behind Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
New Year’s resolutions: Why do we give up on them so quickly?
