Why 80% of New Years Resolutions FAIL by today

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So, how sad is this? 80% of New Year's resolutions fail by the second week of February. And if you haven't noticed, today is February 14th, the second week of February. Now, I know it's also Valentine's Day, but for the purposes of this video, it's why New Year's resolutions fail by today. That makes sense.

So, let's take a look at this and figure out what's going on behind the scenes and how you can stay consistent and actually get what you've set out to achieve without falling into one of these traps where you just slowly let it fizzle out. Maybe you get a little bit tired of it, you keep putting it off, you get bored of it, you change your mind, and you don't actually ever realize your true potential because you just keep putting it off. Then it never happens, and then you end up making the same goal the next year, hoping for different results.

So, case in point here, I've gone over my grand stuff in 2008 Gold Challenge videos that some of you guys have posted, and very few people from that have posted consistently after that or have done any sort of follow-up whatsoever. But it's not just this; I think it runs true with almost all things. It's very easy to start off on such a great trajectory with a lot of excitement behind it, only to fall into complacency shortly afterwards, and then again, slowly fizzle out to nothing.

See, the reality is, the excitement of starting something new wears off fairly quickly, and then you're just left with the treachery of sticking to something that you might not fully be into. Like, maybe it was just a little bit more difficult than you thought it would be. Maybe you're just not as into it as you once were. Maybe it just doesn't seem as practical now as when you started the goal and you started the idea a few months ago.

At that point, it's really easy to start cutting yourself a little slack. And then once you've done that, you give yourself an excuse to cut yourself a little bit more slack. And then at that point, you may as well just be like, "You know what? Let me cut myself a little bit more slack." And then pretty soon, whatever you've set out to do just becomes a distant memory of what could have been.

Honestly, none of us are alone in this; we're totally all guilty of this, including myself. And it has nothing to do with like just being a character flaw or not being good enough to do something. It literally happens to every single person out there. But there are some things you can do now to prevent this from happening and also remember why this was important to you in the first place.

A study was actually conducted in 2016 and found that the factor that mattered the most in whether or not people kept to the New Year's resolutions was just enjoyment. Basically, if people just enjoyed what they were doing, they were more likely to stick with the habits that they created and reached the goals that they've set out to hit.

Now, it also found that getting immediate rewards from these newly formed habits, no matter how small, kept people more engaged and motivated in sticking to their goals. So bear with me on this point; I just came up with this. I had no idea how good this is or not, but think of it like this: your goal is really just like a destination that you want to get to. But a destination in itself won't really get you there.

This is why you need a plan to accompany your goal. The plan is a little bit like your map that's going to tell you what steps you need to take to actually get there. If you're trying to get somewhere, you can't just pick a totally random destination to be like, "You know what? I want to go over there. Let's go over there and hope that I end up where I want to go."

So, coming up with a plan is really like coming up with a route to take to arrive at your destination. But it's not over there, because you have a destination and a route to take you there. But how do you actually get there? This leads us to the daily habits you will form, which is somewhat like the vehicle that will take you on the route to the map you've planned out—the destination you want to arrive at.

And when you combine all three of these: the habits, the plan, and the goal, it's at this point that you can really reach your destination. I have no idea if that metaphor made any sense; I literally just came up with that, and I thought I should record it. I don't know why; maybe that was a bad idea. I hope that makes sense.

So, with that said, if you found yourself with a goal but are slowly losing the motivation to make it happen, focus on the daily habits you can do instead of the actual goal itself. Literally, just focus on what you could be doing every single day. And if you have to make a list, then just make sure you stick to that list. This is also going to make it a lot less overwhelming than having a huge goal and then freaking out, wondering how you're going to do that.

If you just focus on the tiny individual steps instead, then creating these habits really just takes patience and faith. The hardest part of doing any of this is really just the beginning, and it's just starting. Many people end up giving up before ever having created a habit because they just assume the struggle will last forever. In reality, it's not going to, and it's really just the first six weeks or so that's going to be the toughest point.

Then after you do that, your body just adjusts to it; it becomes normalized, and then you do it without even thinking about it. Also, perhaps one of the reasons why 80% of people fail at their resolutions is because they just forget about the bigger picture. We forget about what made us decide to try to change our lives for the better, and then we end up accepting the short-term pleasure over long-term fulfillment.

Once you start doing that, it's very easy to take the approach of, "It's not that important right now; I will do it later," over the, "This is what I can potentially achieve long term if I just do this." This brings me to one of my favorite points in the entire video. I nerd out any time I get to talk about psychology or anything like that, and that is Parkinson's Law.

Why that's so important, why you need to know this, why you need to be familiar with this, and how this is incredibly relevant to anything you're doing. Parkinson's Law pretty much just states that your work expands so as to fill the allotted time for its completion. Now, if you've ever done this before in your life—and I hated this—it's called homework. You're very familiar with this, as am I, because I sucked at homework, and I did this.

If you had a homework assignment that was due the next day, chances are you would work to get it done the next day. If you have a homework assignment that's due next week, chances are you'll work on that for the entire week to turn it in. Same thing; like if you have a nine-to-five job, if they give you a set amount of tasks to do in the day between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., you will find the time to complete all the tasks you need to do by 5:00 p.m.

But if they gave you the choice to say, "You know what? You can leave at 1:00 p.m. just as long as you get all your work done by 1:00 p.m." Guess what? All of a sudden, you'll be able to finish all of your work by 1:00 p.m. That is Parkinson's Law. You will basically take as long as what's given to you to complete a task. So, if you're given a day, you will take a day. If you're given a week, you will take a week. If you're given a month, you will take a month.

This should also show you that we spend a lot of time procrastinating on things we could be doing a lot faster. So, what are the most useful things that you can do to hit your goal? One is to shorten the amount of time to hit that goal. Like, for instance, if you've set yourself a month to complete something, you know what? Just cut that in half. Instead of giving yourself a month, give yourself two weeks.

I think we all end up underestimating what we can do in the short term and how much we can really make happen when you need to. So, make sure to remember this when you made your goals: Think about why you made the goals in the first place and why this is actually important to you. And if you're not sticking to these goals, figure out what's holding you back.

Are they too vague? Are they not specific enough? Is it too much? Do you feel overwhelmed? Really dig deep and find out what's actually holding you back and what you need to do to tweak that to make it work for you.

Then just as a warning to you guys—trigger warning here—make sure you guys are sitting down. I'm about to go really cheesy on this, but you got to make sure you have SMART goals. SMART is one of these acronyms for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based.

So, we'll start at the very beginning here with the S: Just make sure it's specific. It's precise and you know exactly what you want. Then the M: Just make sure again it's measurable and that you can actually measure your progress along the way. It's not some arbitrary goal you have no idea when you've hit it or you don't. Make sure you can see the steps along the way to get there.

Then what I mean achievable: Just make sure you can actually do it. Don't just say, "I want a trillion bucks." Chances of that happening? It's probably not gonna happen. So, make sure it's actually something you can physically do. Then with the R, make sure it's relevant. Now, but irrelevant? Relevant? Am I relevant? I mean why is it important to you? Why do you want to make this happen? What's at stake if you don't make this happen?

And finally, the T for time-based: Just figure out when you need to achieve this goal by. And like I said, don't just make a goal far off in advance because it's very easy to put off; figure out when you need to hit this goal, and maybe have some smaller timeframes along the way that you can make sure you consistently hit to make sure you're on track.

So, if you're one of these people who's watching it, who slowly let their goals slide, who slowly given them less importance over time, who slowly started to put things off, at least take the time today to revisit why you made these goals in the first place, why they're important, and then think about some things that you can do to make sure you hit these goals.

Then make sure you stick with them. Again, it's important to realize why they're important in the first place, so you don't end up as one of these 80% that doesn't hit their goals but instead watches YouTube videos and Tai Lopez ads and not making what they want happen, happen.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you haven't subscribed already, and you watch my videos but haven't subscribed, make sure to smash that subscribe button. Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram; I post pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

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Thank you for watching! I really appreciate it, and until next time.