Five Reasons Why New Year's Resolutions Fail


Five Reasons Why New Year's Resolutions Fail
Here are five reasons why New Year's resolutions fail so you can avoid them and keep yours!

After the sheer excess of the festive period it is usually with great promise and optimism we look forward to the beginning of a New Year. Good intentions are flying around everywhere and there is often a real sense of people feeling determined to make this year better than the last. However, it is really easy to make a resolution, it’s a lot harder and another thing entirely to keep it!

If you are struggling to keep to yours, maybe you are wavering a bit, then hopefully these five reasons on why resolutions normally fail will help keep you on the straight and narrow and make achieving your goals that little bit easier.


1.  Keeping it to Yourself

Not telling anyone what you are trying to achieve isn’t just to save you from them if you fail or give up. Having the support of friends and family can really help when you are struggling for motivation, you may even find that they want to join you and will do it with you

2.  Being Unrealistic

Let’s be honest, you’re not going to visit the gym six times a week if you haven’t exercised at all for the last fifteen years, being realistic in your target setting is paramount to the success of your resolution. It will stop you feeling disheartened early on and you will feel less inclined to stop.

3.  Not Planning How to Tackle It

Even with a realistic goal set in place you will need to plan how you will accommodate the change (no matter how small) into your daily routine. If for example you are trying to give up smoking, have an idea what you will do in the times when you would normally smoke, or if you are going to start attending a gym ensure you block out time in your diary when you will have time to go. Leaving it to chance will likely result in failure.

4.  Not Setting a Timeframe

This doesn’t come naturally to most, but when setting yourself a target think about how long you will aim to do it for. Targeting something for a month or two is much easier to deal with and when you achieve these more manageable chunks you will be more likely to carry on as you will feel that you are progressing.

5.  Not Choosing a Reward

When you have achieved your goal have something planned that you will do at the end. This can be as simple as have a bar of chocolate or it can be buy something with money you have saved from giving something such as smoking up. Set yourself an incentive and you will be much more likely to succeed.

Good luck!

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