It’s a new year. Phew. Time to buy your 2019 planner, write down your goals and address all of those bad habits. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably GEEKing out. There’s just something about having a clean slate. It makes you feel renewed, empowered and excited to start the year off strong. But how is it that so many people fail at their new year’s resolutions?!

There must be a reason why gym members all say the same thing about the newbies… “They’ll all be gone by February,” they say. Sadly, they’re not wrong either. In fact, only 9.2 percent of people ever achieve their New Year goals. What’s the deal?!

Keep on reading to learn the 8 ways to quickly fail at your New Year’s resolutions. (And remember, what works for you, might not work for someone else.)

You’re setting too lofty of a goal

You and I both know major change doesn’t happen overnight. Reaching an ambitious goal like losing 45 pounds or going to the gym six days a week starts with gradual change, not overnight perfection.

Don’t take it personally. Just because you’re breaking up your goal into smaller chunks, doesn’t mean that it’s not contributing to your larger overarching goal, later. According to major studies on habits, when people set a major change, they end up failing fairly quickly compared to a “nudge” which Amy Cuddy talks about in her book “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges”.

So what is this “nudge,” you ask?

It’s a small change approach to changing your habits, which ultimately, doesn’t put as much pressure on you. Especially if you fail. It’s much easier to mentally bounce back after not losing 4 pounds than realizing how far you are away from 45. If you’re setting your new year goals or putting together your list, write down a few small habit changes.

For example:

Say you want to start getting up at 5am. If you normally wake up at 7:30am, start with 7am.

Trust me. You might feel like you’re not taking a “drastic enough” approach, but slow and steady wins the race. Almost NO ONE completes an ambitious goal on the first try. When I wanted to lose 30lbs, I had this huge weight loss map on my bathroom mirror. It had a square for each pound that I wanted to lose. Therefore when I lost one pound, I would fill a square in. Whenever I looked at the list of empty squares, it made me feel defeated. So what did I do? Create a map with 5 squares for 5 pounds. And what happened? I reached 5 pounds. Then I created a new map with another five. Eventually I reached my goal (and much faster than I would have with that large, overwhelming map).

You’re only seeing your goals as “New Year” resolutions

Many people, especially Americans, only set their goals at the beginning of the year. How can this be a bad thing? Well, here’s what tends to happen. Once those goals are not achieved right away, mindsets tend to shift. It goes from 2019 New Year goals to, “I failed, I’ll just try again next year.” Let’s be real, my friends. You don’t need to wait until next year to accomplish your goals or change your bad habits. Just because you don’t reach your goals in the first six months doesn’t mean that you can’t. That’s probably why you’re reading this list. Figure out what’s stopping you, and make a change. Change the way that you’re setting your goals to find what works for you. 😉

You’re being too hard on yourself

🙌 Please, stop being so hard on yourself. No one is perfect. We’re all just trying to do the best we can and that involves… not. giving. up. You didn’t wake up early this morning?! Fine. Try again tomorrow. But please, recognize that negative self talk is terrible for your mindset. Work on shutting it the heck up! Negative mindset breeds negative habits and actions. Believe in yourself and make a small change in your habit. It will make a big difference on your outcome.

You haven’t done the research

It can be easy to get lost in an ambitious goal, or any goal in general, ESPECIALLY when you don’t know how to get started. Honestly, this is just one of the many reasons why people procrastinate. If you want to start a goal or change a habit, do your research. Don’t think that learning something new is easy for everyone. Quite honestly, we’re all in this together. We’re all on the same team. If you’re motivated, you can learn anything you set your mind to. For example, if you’re having trouble preparing a morning routine, spend 5 minutes to research what others are doing. If you want to lose weight, compare weight loss programs.

You’re setting too many goals

You can bet I’m guilty of this too. It’s like creating a two page to-do list and then getting so overwhelmed by it that you don’t do anything. Now, what’s the point in that? 🤦‍♀️ Do what you’re comfortable with. If you start to get overwhelmed, scale back.

You’re not tracking the progress

If you’re not tracking your progress, how are you holding yourself accountable? Life gets busy. We have jobs, relationships, family, kids, friends… The list goes on. If your goals are truly important to you it only takes a few minutes every day to read your goals and keep them top of mind. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to forget about the goals you said if you don’t refer back to them.

You’re not ready to change

Last year I read this book, “Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life.” The author made a really good point about setting goals and mindset. Why is it that you keep telling yourself, time and time again that you want to lose weight, but never do it? You spend all of this time and energy thinking about what you are eating, what you’re not eating, what you are doing right, what you’re not doing right. You will drive yourself mad going around in the circles. If it has been years and you still haven’t done it then there must be some part of you that is okay with the way you are.

You have two choices.

Continue driving yourself mad by overthinking about what you’re eating. 🤯
Accept that you don’t want to change right now and be okay with it. ✌️
Decide that you will lose weight, and do it. 👏

You’re focusing too much on the end result

I’ll preface this section with this:

“The long distance to the goal gives us a lot of opportunities to fail along the way. And that gives us more opportunities to give up. We tell ourselves there’s no point, that we’ve already blown it.” -Amy Cuddy

Focusing too much on the end result can make your mind focus more on self depreciating thoughts. “Why haven’t I reached my goal yet?, I must suck, I’m so bad at goal-setting, why can’t I do this, why am I not there yet?”

That’s why focusing on the process is more effective. It allows us to focus on momentum; it pushes us to keep going. Rather than not feeling good enough it pushes us to look at challenges as opportunities for growth.

You have to love the process. If you fall in love with the process you’ll fall in love with the results.

There you have it, the most common reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail.

So when you go write your New Year’s goals…

Remember that you are only human and you’re doing the best you can. I hope you took some notes on the reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail quickly… these simple tips have helped me and I hope they help you, too! Send it along to a friend or colleague to inspire, motivate and help them start 2019 with a bang.

8 Reasons Why New Year's Resolutions Fail