Why 92% of New Year’s Resolutions Fail
It all felt so pregnant with hope and possibility at the start of this year – you are going to quit smoking, start exercising, work less, make more money, eat less sugar, spend less time on Instagram and find your soul mate. Yet right about now the rubber has already hit the road and things are starting to slide. Time to rethink your strategy.
According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute, only 8% of people succeed in realising their New Year’s resolutions. Eight!!!
That means the overwhelming chances are that you aren’t going to change. I know we all like to think we’re that special subset, but 80% of people consider themselves above average drivers too – so we all have a bad habit of up-ranking ourselves.
My job is essentially trying to get New Year’s resolutions out of people all year round, and what I’ve observed is that the things people want to pull out are generally what are holding them up. All those ‘bad’ habits are in reality ways in which you are managing your mental health. And that’s the trick you see, you can’t pull out a bad habit without putting in something else that functions in a similar manner to support your mental health – just ripping things out rarely works in my experience.
The other major factor is having a clear ‘why’. To get to a real why, however, you have to pass through 3-4 little whys. The technique is to go at yourself like an annoying 4 year old and just keep pitching ‘whys’ at yourself. You want to eat less chocolate – ‘Why?’ So you can lose weight – why? So you can feel more confident going on dates – why? So you can find the love of your life – why? So you can just relax into being yourself and give your gifts more deeply. Bingo! That's your real goal - the rest are just means to an end. Shoot for that!
Once you’ve got your ‘why-bother’ then you can figure out what is needed to support this goal, feeling or state… other than chocolate.
Then you need to put in some tangible grounded ways in which you are actually going to action these.
That’s the other key ingredient to success, you see – making small achievable goals on a regular basis rather than once a year making grandiose promises that you can’t deliver on.
"Lose Weight", "Exercise more" and "Less Social Media" aren't even actually goals - they are wishes and in such areas of life they aren't enough. To magically turn a wish into a goal you need to sprinkle a little old-fashioned strategy on it to ground it in reality: 'no beer Monday-Thursdays, walk to work two times a week, switch the phone off at 7 pm, etc.
If you were your own lover you would have broken up with yourself by now after that endless stream of broken promises, right?!
How can you trust yourself at all? And that’s the core of it all. Every time when you break your word it becomes a little weaker, but every time you keep it then it becomes stronger. So shifting into a practice of continuing to set small achievable mini-goals that lead you step by step in the direction of your deepest unfolding is the shift we are all looking for in this arena. It's about gradually strengthening those magical faculties of word and will - but they are muscles that need to be gradually and consistently trained.
I would therefore invite you to re-evaluate your New Year’s resolution in light of all this – give yourself permission to revise it, or even throw it away if needs be. Ask yourself ‘why’ 4-5 times and shoot directly for that, figure out what to include that will support your deepest why, then finally identify which of your countless bad habits is the single most important roadblock and break it down into a series of tangible goals that you schedule in.
And as for the rest of your flaws and woes? Let them be - you can add them to a list in 6 months if you still feel strongly about it - but in the meantime be kind to yourself. Treat yourself like a friend in need.
Finally, herbs can help maintain the brain chemistry that is necessary for all this, so if you need an extra boost then here are the three formulas I generally recommend: Saffron Soul Precious Pills, Neuro Change Elixir and Mood Mana.
With Heart,
Jimi
