How Many People Achieve Their New Year Resolutions?

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Only 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions.

But, there’s still time! You can still achieve them. This article can help.

The Yearly Goal-Setting Event

Don’t most of us look forward, with joyful anticipation, to the promise of a new year? Around January 1 each year, setting goals and resolutions is so popular it seems to be part of our DNA.

If you think about it, doing this is an essential and routine practice in businesses, where goals collectively lead to attaining an over-arching set of outcomes, such as delivering on the Purpose of the business or building future growth capabilities through continuous improvement.

Like businesses, people set goals and resolutions that are aligned with higher outcomes we desire in our lives at work and outside work. We may want to continue to learn, to become an expert in a specialty, achieve a new level of fitness and health, or successfully make long-term changes. Whatever our own reasons may be, achieving resolutions and goals provides a sense of fulfillment that cannot be experienced through other activities.

If you’re not one of the 8% who achieved your goal, don’t fret! It’s early in the year. It’s not too late; you have time. Following are some tools to help drive your success! Let’s reflect on what happened, learn and move forward.

Reflection helps us learn from experience.

As we near the start of each year and think about setting our goals, we tend to check our rear-view mirror. When we look back and reflect on track records that include setting and not achieving our desired outcomes, it’s not surprising that people may dread making new goal commitments. In fact, the desire to avoid failure can keep us from setting resolutions and goals despite our hopes for good things in the new year.

When we don’t succeed at resolutions and goals, we let ourselves (and sometimes other people) down. This can lead to feeling bad about ourselves, and these painful feelings can stay with us. In fact, bad feelings about ourselves may fester for some time, even long term.

What is even worse is this: when we don’t set resolutions or goals due to our desire to avoid the emotional experience of failure, the feelings often come anyway. We may suffer disappointment, shame and self-judgement simply by failing to set resolutions or goals.

Fortunately, you can beat this catch 22 by proceeding to establish your resolutions and goals, following an effective process that enables you to build new habits, anticipate and overcome obstacles, and closely monitor progress.

What Are Common Impediments to Success?

Our experience shows there are 4 circumstances that most often obstruct achievement of resolutions and goals. They are:

1. The goal is effective, but the individual’s game plan to achieve it is flawed. The actions being taken don’t lead to effective goal completion.
2. Achievement of the goal is only temporary, due to the continuation of conflicting habits or practices.
3. Behaviors that are integral to achieving the resolution or goal are not adopted or sustained as a habit.
4. The goal does not continue to motivate the behavior change once it’s achieved, so the habits stop, as the behavior is no longer essential. This can happen when a goal or resolution isn’t integral to a higher, over-arching set of outcomes.

Fortunately, these obstacles can be overcome!

Set Yourself Up to Succeed by Preparing.

With knowledge, careful preparation and a proven-effective approach, people can set ourselves up for success. Like ascending a staircase, a lot of small steps are required to succeed. There is no one big step that can bring lasting success.

By mastering the skills of starting new habits, you build your capability to make personal change. You build your faith in yourself by repeatedly forming new habits.

Begin by making a list of habits you can get excited about, unrelated to your New Year’s resolutions.

Once you have your list, visit links 1-3 and follow the simple process.

This sets the stage for setting and achieving your New Year’s resolution. Collectively, these three steps provide a proven systematic approach for managing your behavior, celebrating each small win, and changing the outcome for 2022.

Links:

1. What Drives Behavior: It’s Your M-A-P (Motivation-Ability-Prompt) LINK: http://rosannamnadeau.com/2021/10/18/understanding-behavior-your-own-and-that-of-others/
2. Your Recipe for Success – LINK: http://rosannamnadeau.com/2022/01/02/understanding-behavior-your-own-and-that-of-others-mini-segment-2/
3. Cultivating New Behaviors/Habits – LINK:-http://rosannamnadeau.com/2021/12/29/understanding-behavior-your-own-others-mini-segment-3-cultivating-new-behaviors/
4. Stopping a Behavior/Habit – LINK: http://rosannamnadeau.com/2021/12/02/understanding-behavior-your-own-others-mini-segment-4-stopping-behavior/
5. Transferring Learning to Real Life – LINK: http://rosannamnadeau.com/2021/09/14/understanding-behavior-your-own-others-mini-segment-5-transferring-knowledge-and-skills-from-training-to-real-life/
6. How to Create a Development Action Plan – Note: This action planning tool can be used to create a project plan to achieve a resolution or goal – LINK: http://rosannamnadeau.com/2021/07/17/whats-in-an-action-plan/

We wish you a year of achieved resolutions and goals, enjoyment of the process and the feeling of fulfillment it all brings.

Please share your comments, questions, opinions, experience and results!

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Copyright by Rosanna M. Nadeau 2022

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