Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail: Do This Instead

As we transition from Christmas into the new year its normal to consider how you’d like to improve your life this year. For many people that means New Year’s Resolutions. Sadly, it often means making exactly the same ones as last year.

Speaking from my own personal experience you’d be shocked how many times I wrote down “pay off my debt” over the years. Only to make the same resolution 12 months later. So why do New Year’s Resolutions fail, and what works better?

What is Your Goal?

Almost every New Year’s Resolution follows the same concept: it’s a goal or target that you want to achieve over the coming year. Perhaps you want to quit smoking, or to lose weight, or – like me for so many years – to pay off debt. The goal is clear.

The problem is that many of these are huge goals. You don’t just wake up on January 1st with six pack abs because you wrote it on a list. You don’t pay off that $10,000 of credit card debt just because you want it enough. These goals, therefore, can be tremendously intimidating. This creates a mental block before you even start. However this is far from the biggest issue…

The biggest problem is that we tend to choose the final destination but not properly consider the journey to get there. Imagine driving cross country to a specific city but without even looking at a map book or owning a satnav.

Madness, right?

Oh sure, the odd person will get lucky and meet their target, but most people will get lost along the way. Even the successful individuals probably could have reached their destination quicker and more efficiently by considering the journey.

How to Make Better New Year’s Resolutions

If focusing on the end goal doesn’t tend to work very well, the solution is instead to invest in the journey. You need to choose a specific set of patterns or habits that you can follow regularly, and which will lead you inevitably towards your goal. Let’s look at a few examples…

How to Pay Off Debt

Let’s assume you’ve got $10,000 of debt to pay off this year. Divide this down to $833 a month. Then consider how you can afford this sum of money each month.

Can you cut your cable TV?

Can you eat out less?

Can you learn to budget properly?

And once you’ve made the necessary budget adjustments how will you ensure that you put this money into debt repayment rather than any other expense?

Once you’ve got a plan this can then be turned into regular action steps to follow all year long.

Some examples might be:

• Each evening I will prepare myself lunch for the following day (saving me $5 a day).
• Every time I get paid I will find another expense that I can eliminate.
• I will set up an arrangement with my bank to automatically pay off an agreed chunk of debt when I get paid.

How to Lose Weight

Losing weight is arguably even easier than paying off debt. We know the process simply involves consuming fewer calories than you’re burning each day, so your body has to use stored fat to make up the difference.

Some action steps could therefore comprise:

• I will stop eating carbs on January 1st.
• Each morning I will prepare a healthy salad to take with me to work.
• I will visit the gym for 30 minutes of cardio before work on Monday-Friday.
• I will only drink alcohol once a week.

Follow steps like this – which soon become a daily habit – and you’ll naturally start to shed weight. That goal almost becomes an inevitable end result of these processes.

Focus on the Journey Not the Destination

It was only when I started to focus on the journey that my debt started to fall off a cliff. Regular, repeated, small actions help to keep you motivated, and break down a giant task into tiny, almost imperceptible steps.

In closing, last year I lost 4 stone (56lbs) of unwanted body fat (expect an article on this shortly). And that’s since the beginning of May, with several “breaks” along the way for vacations etc. I’m now slimmer and leaner than I’ve been in years, and clothes shopping is finally fun.

I didn’t focus on that target weight at the end; instead I worried about sticking to my daily schedule. I ate eggs for breakfast. I had a salad with some kind of protein for lunch. I ate meat and vegetables for dinner. And I did this pretty much every day for 6+ months. And the weight fell off; it almost became automatic once I’d got my habits in order.

In conclusion if you want to make better New Year’s Resolutions this year then focus on putting in place a routine that will lead to you to it almost automatically.

Remember: focus on the journey not the destination.

Question: What’s the most audacious goal you’ve set for yourself this year? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!