Why most New Year's Resolutions fail
[Applause] As autumn settles in, leaves fall from the trees, and another growing season ends with the harvest. This might not have been a great year for crops, but winter will destroy the evidence of last year's efforts and present a new opportunity for growth—a fresh start. Near the end of the year, you might find your home is in disarray; your cabinets and fridge are overflowing, yet there's nothing to eat. Your desk is a mess of papers, notices, and cables, yet you struggle to finish any of your projects. Maybe you're feeling out of shape or starting to reflect on past relationships. You think you should know more than you do. You've barely seen the world, and the clock is ticking. A feeling of despair settles in, but also a desire for change and a sense of renewed hope.
The clock strikes midnight. It's the new year—the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. You feel inspired to make a resolution or two, take steps to improve your life. You could resolve to get in shape or eat better. Maybe you'll plan to master a new language this year or learn how to code. The new year fills you with hope, and you feel like anything is possible—like everything is possible. But then despair sinks in yet again, and you know from past experiences that you're not great at keeping New Year's resolutions. Most people aren't. In fact, 90% of New Year's resolutions are abandoned in the first three months. Your neat cabinets become cluttered again, and that effort to learn a new language is swiftly forgotten. Adios.
It makes you wonder, is there a reliable way to keep our resolutions, or is this annual concept of a fresh start unsound to begin with? For all we know, humans have been making resolutions for at least 4,000 years. The first known New Year's celebrations and resolutions were documented in the ancient civilization of Babylon. These resolutions revolved around the growing season, with the new year starting in the spring. They were an intertwining of religion and mythology with socioeconomic values and power. After parading statues of their deities through the city streets, Babylonians would enact religious ceremonies to symbolize their victory over chaos. In addition to planting crops, people would pledge allegiance to the reigning king, but celebrations also involved a practical promise to repay debts in the next year. As a reward, they believed the gods would look favorably upon them.
Similar traditions continued in ancient Rome with New Year's pledges and sacrifices. The start date shifted when Emperor Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar in 46 BCE, which moved the start of the new year to January 1st. In the Middle Ages, medieval knights pledged allegiance and renewed their vows of chivalry and valor. For thousands of years, we've been making these resolutions and failing to meet them. But why? Why is it that most New Year's resolutions go unfulfilled? Why does hope fade into despair?
Well, many resolutions fail because of what psychologists call false hope syndrome. We make unreasonable goals with high hopes of achieving them, and then when we're unable to reach these lofty targets, we get distraught. This leads to a lasting despair—we lose hope in the belief that we can make meaningful changes in our lives. This is the problem with inspiring stories of change we see online or on TV. They fill us with confidence but leave us without a concrete path towards change. They give us a North Star but no navigation skills.
Sticking to a resolution requires us to be grounded in a state where we don't think change is easy but where we still believe it's possible. Many of us don't think in this dichotomy, inevitably leading to failure. Another problem many of us have is that our goals are often too large and ambiguous. We make resolutions like "I want to be healthy" and "I want to learn a new language," but we don't make a plan on how we plan to achieve those things. When considering learning a new language, for example, set a specific goal like signing up and finishing a language course. When you commit to a process over an outcome, you avoid being overwhelmed by what constitutes a successful resolution. Completing the course is straightforward and achievable, whereas learning a new language is a vague statement and can easily make you feel defeated.
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Back to our story on TikTok: This past New Year's, resolutions took on a different form. Influencers posted "ins and outs" lists on their feeds. The "ins" list included things like good habits—maybe being punctual. On the "outs" list were things like fast fashion and other consumer habits believed to cause harm. These lists often featured more specifics than your average lofty resolution, but lacked tangible steps to achieve them. If you want to avoid fast fashion, what are you going to replace it with? Will you buy fewer clothes and spend more on local clothing? Will you buy more used clothes? These are the kind of steps that need to be considered.
First, the problem with the "outs" list is that they try to erase behavior, which rarely works. If you rephrase your "outs" list with an "ins" list, you focus on what you're replacing the "outs" with. If you want to stop sitting in a chair for hours on end, don't try to stop sitting in a chair for hours; focus on building a habit that will replace that instead, like maybe you commit to doing stretches every hour or trying to do some mental work during a walk.
Another problem that these videos and resolutions, in general, create is that they often lack a good reason. Why are you choosing this resolution? Is it something you want deep down, or is it just a fleeting consideration? Pursuing a goal almost always requires making yourself uncomfortable in some way. Losing weight means eating less of the food you crave and exercising more. If you don't sincerely want your goal, will you really be willing to make yourself uncomfortable to achieve it?
Often, we impulsively choose our resolutions or "ins" and "outs" for the year, but when it comes to making sacrifices to achieve them, our ambition shrinks. We realize that our desire for that specific change was fleeting. In psychology, there's what's called the Fresh Start Effect, and it's simply the effect of fresh starts on task performance. In a study, researchers found that fresh starts were helpful in areas where people were underperforming, but oddly, the places where people already excelled were actually worsened by a fresh start.
When picking a resolution, you want to address a deficiency and not just chase a trend. Otherwise, your fresh start won't have a positive impact. And if you don't feel strongly about making a resolution, try thinking about the notion of a fresh start. What in your life would you like to reset? Like the yearly harvest, there must be something in the back of your mind that hangs over your life like a dark cloud. Zero in on that desire for a fresh start to find something you genuinely want to change in your life.
Once your plans for change are narrowed down, you need to ask yourself an important question: Are you ready for it? Before people are psychologically prepared to change, they usually go through stages: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Successful resolutions are typically made when people are already in the action phase of change. So when considering resolutions, it makes sense then to avoid plans that you have barely considered. You should be so far along with your desire for change that you'd likely have done it anyway.
You may think this would make the New Year's resolution pointless, but that's not true. While it is good to make a change any time of year, the New Year presents an excellent opportunity to reinforce your plans for change. There's extra incentive to stick to a New Year's resolution. It's a promise to yourself with bigger stakes, and even better, if you share your resolution with someone, you have a witness to hold you to your promise. That's external pressure to stick to your plans for change. You can even ask them to hold you to task over it, depending on how serious you want to get.
Real change is achieved incrementally, with the steps clearly laid out. Clarity of how to achieve your goal, along with the deep desire to fulfill it, is crucial. Your steps need to be laid out on a timeline, and they need to be measurable and achievable. Don't be afraid of support either. In a New Year's resolution study, the most successful resolution makers had support in achieving their goals. This can mean a variety of things. Quitting bad habits might mean asking for help from someone who's done it before. You could talk to a therapist or an instructor about your plan.
Ultimately, you need desire and clarity in your New Year's resolution. You need to want to change and have clarity on the steps you need to take. The two most significant obstacles to real change are a lack of will and ambiguity. As most professionals in any field will tell you, it's critical to trust the process. Make the process about changing your focus rather than about the change itself. Otherwise, you're just engaging in fantasy.
To truly change is to change habits. When we give up on a resolution, we're giving up our new habit before it can be set in stone. Our specific resolution to finish a language course probably wouldn't end there. If the habit becomes ingrained, then you'll likely pursue learning further—whether that means taking more courses or just trying to use your new language among native speakers. Change itself can become a habit, leading to a more consistent pursuit of a better life. That's a life with less forgotten goals weighing us down—a life where we can confidently look ahead without regretting our neglected dreams.
Everyone will experience lapses on the road to achieving the resolution, and it's important not to judge yourself harshly for any missteps. This can result in quitting needlessly, and there's no point in sinking back into despair. Real change is possible; it happens all the time, but it rarely comes easy. Watch this video next to understand how to build long-lasting habits.