Hello! Seiiti Arata. Why do new years’ resolutions end up failing? With the turn of the year lots of people want to do more physical exercise, slim down, increase sources of income or study more. And why is it that so many of these new year promises aren’t fulfilled?
In our previous episode, (https://arata.se/hello99) we mentioned that the greater majority of people fail in keeping enough consistency and dedication to make sure the new year’s resolution is kept to. In some statistics, just 9% of people that make a new year’s resolution are able to successfully maintain it.
Why could it be that it’s so difficult to keep a new year’s resolution?
For those who follow the Arata Academy channel, you well know that one of the methodologies that we use is to encourage your reflection. I never bring you a canned response, a doctrine that everyone needs to follow blindly. And furthermore I strongly recommend that you run in the opposite direction when you come across someone wanting to indoctrinate you. Think for yourself, always!
It’s because of this that I leave you a question:
— What causes New year’s resolutions to fail? Could it be laziness? Could it be bad luck? Could there be some kind of external factor holding us back? Pause the video, reflect on your own life and respond in the comments saying which are the main reasons that cause people to fail to set new year’s resolutions.
Ready? So then let’s look at five reasons that cause new year’s resolutions to fail.
1. Lack of an intelligent plan
In the previous episode, we talk about the problems in a lack of a true dedication and commitment. However, just the commitment is not enough. There are people that have a lot of energy, disposition and really go after things.
There are people that honestly say that they give out over a thousand CV’s, and even so, they can’t even get a single job interview. So there’s something wrong here.
In this example it’s not worth making any more effort to hand out another thousand CV’s, because it’s very clear that the strategy wasn’t good and the plan wasn’t intelligent, let alone well executed.
If I put together a CV that can’t communicate the value of my work, let alone my potential, or that I’m spreading myself out in the wrong directions, it’s not worth sending out many times, because the result will hardly change.
An intelligent plan has specific and efficient processes. An inefficient plan only considers the final destination, without clarifying which are the necessary stages to implement.
The case of the CV was just one illustrative example. What you need to learn is to evaluate the quality of your plan and also the quality of the execution of your plan.
2. Lack of clarity
Another classic problem is lack of specificity. Your new year’s objective needs to be specific!
For example, just saying that you want to eat in the healthiest way possible doesn’t mean much. Saying that you’re going to study more also doesn’t mean much, as it’s not a clear objective.
Your plan needs clarity and to be consistent with it’s context.
Don’t become totally enthusiastic now making promises that will be difficult to fulfill. Start with realistic projects and follow the philosophy of continued improvement.
You don’t need to do everything perfectly now. It’s more important that you start something, carry on and are also able to constantly improve. Your continued improvement.
3. To have continuity, create systems.
If you’re depending on just your willpower to achieve your new year’s resolution, you have a problem. Willpower is a limited resource. At some point it ends. There are days when you won’t have the will.
Imagine that you decided, for example, to take a swimming class at 7 o’clock in the morning. However, you know that if you kept depending on just your willpower, it’s highly likely that you’ll end up missing classes because you want to carry on sleeping.
In this case, you need to create some kind of system that guarantees you will wake up at the right time to go swimming. For example, if you have a friend that wakes up quite early, you can invite this friend to join your swimming class and go together, and promise to give him a lift. The only condition is that your friend comes to your house so you can leave together. In this way, you now have a system in which your friend will always call you and knock on your door until you get up so that both of you end up going to the class.
4. If you don’t believe in yourself, you have a big problem.
Pay close attention to the factors that are causing you to fail in reaching your goals for new year. Beyond not having the benefits of desired results, something even worse can happen: you can start to lose confidence in yourself. This is what’s called learned helplessness – that is, creating the belief that you are a person that can’t do anything right.
It’s what happens with people that say that the only new year’s resolution that they made that worked out was to stop making new year’s resolutions.
A lot of people often say that it’s a waste of time trying to set new year’s resolutions, because they always go wrong. Careful, as this means closing doors, and will only limit the possibilities ahead.
5. Leaving it for later
If there is something that’s important to you… and you say that you’ll do it tomorrow, pay attention. When tomorrow comes, act. If you realize that you need to put it off until the day after tomorrow, you have a problem.
The habit of constantly leaving it for later means that we have a difficulty in implementing some kind of a concrete action today.
Starting tomorrow generally doesn’t work. You need to implement something now. This will help you break the habit of procrastination.
Without good practice and without guidance, it’s very easy to end up losing yourself with the time. A lot of new year’s resolutions include complex, gigantic plans that will be carried out over the 12 months. Instead of putting together complicated plans, set smaller, more short term objectives which will then become easier to carry out and figure out what the next stages will be.
The new year’s resolutions will only bring long term results as a result in changes in behaviour, vision, knowledge, priorities and beliefs. It’s no use just saying that we want this or that result. We need to pay the price to implement the necessary changes.
Most people have never stopped to reflect about the resources necessary to make the change. Nothing is free. You have to pay the price so you don’t become one on those people that wants something in exchange for nothing.
It will be necessary to have patience, it will be necessary to invest time. It will be necessary to invest financial resources to gain the necessary tools and guidance from more experienced people that can speed up our results.
You have to prioritize: it will be necessary to give up activities and commitments of lower value. This is how you elevate what you want to accomplish as part of your new year’s resolution to a higher degree of priority.
However, none of this means anything if the plan developed isn’t intelligent. So that you learn to accomplish intelligent plans and avoid the most common mistakes when setting your new year’s resolutions, I invite you to get to know the course ‘Better New Year’ Visit the link now – https://arata.se/betternewyear