Forget New Year's resolution, behaviour change is the only goal worth setting
92% of goals that survive "Quitter's Day" fail by February. Save yourself from feeling terrible next December by debunking three limiting beliefs keeping you stuck every year.
Every January, millions of people renew their hopes for goals, arguably no different from those they set the previous year.
The stats are just depressing.
92% of adults will not follow through on their resolutions because, by the second Friday in January (on “Quitter’s Day”), many people have reverted to their usual selves as the new year loses its luster. As for the goal setters who survive January, well, nearly 80% abandon their goals by February.
That millions of people fail at New Year’s resolutions means we’re getting it wrong. We’re failing at our annual goals because we use the wrong timelines, the wrong metrics, and the wrong part of our brains.
1. You need 21 days
Many people have been led to believe that habits take 21 days to form. It’s a catchy number and short enough to feel manageable. You tell yourself it’s just three weeks, “all I have to do is try something new for just three weeks, and I’m good to go.”
But research on habit formation reveals that health-related habits typically require between two and five months to develop, with a median of 59–66 days before they feel automatic.
So if you start on January 1st, you won’t actually be “rewired” until mid-March at the earliest. That’s why by February, when the novelty of the year has worn off, the new habit you’re trying to cultivate hasn’t yet been automated in us.
2. You are perfect the way you are
As if getting the timing wrong isn’t enough, we’re also miscalculating the cost of changes we need to make to achieve our goals.
Every meaningful goal you set is in direct competition with your existing life: your routines, comforts, and identities. Wanting a different outcome for our lives without being willing to change familiar behaviors creates an internal conflict between the rational and the irrational within us.
For example, if you say you want to earn more money and are calculating things right, you must be ready to sacrifice leisure time, risk failure, and do the tedious work that high-income skills usually require.
Just as the person determined to lose weight must be ready to suffer pain from exercise, dietary changes, and fasting.
You cannot be serious if you want the result, yet hate making the sacrifice. You cannot be serious if you have a “goal” that pushes you forward but a “lifestyle” that pulls you back.
3. Your past failures don’t matter
If you’re serious about achieving your goals, start caring about the impact of failing at them every year because they pile up, and as they do, they impact your self-esteem and your potential.
When you write up a list of resolutions in December but abandon it by February, you fall below square one. You are mentally behind where you started because you have just proven to yourself, perhaps for the umpteenth time, that you’re incapable of getting things done.
One study on the impact of failing to achieve one's goals found that “participants who failed the high and specific goal showed a decrease in affect, self-esteem, and motivation compared to participants who attained that goal.” This study was conducted with specific goals, so imagine the impact even for people who set ambiguous goals.
In other words, after failing to achieve a goal, we are likely to avoid taking on similar challenges in the future, defaulting to easier alternatives.
You set a goal, you fail, you feel bad, you set a smaller goal next time, or worse, you stop setting them altogether. Eventually, you train your brain to believe that “trying” is painful and useless. That explains why some people don’t bother setting goals. They’ve tried and failed, so to them, there’s no point trying anymore.
You might say, “Okay, how about people who don’t give up but continue setting goals that they are statistically doomed to fail?”
Well, I think they’re trapped because they’re obsessed with outcomes.
Society constantly reinforces the idea that success is visual. It’s the car, the house, the number on the scale, the job title. So, naturally, when we want to improve, we focus on changing what is visible. We dress differently, we buy a planner, and we get a gym membership. We “package” our lives to look like we are making progress.
External change is attractive because we can at least be rewarded with attention, admiration, and influence. And we think no one cares about our behavioural changes. That no one admires how we approach things calmly under pressure or our patience.
Yet these are the traits that actually produce the outcomes people want.
The only goal worth setting is behaviour change
Many goals are framed as outcomes: earn more money, lose weight, start a business, and get promoted. That’s okay.
These outcomes feel concrete and motivating, but only the right people should set them.
Why?
Because they correspond to a fundamental set of behavioural patterns. Examples:
People who are oriented toward serving people, offering value, or have acquired a set of in-demand skills tend to earn more money and are right to set goals for even more income.
People who have developed an endurance for pain and discipline are likely to follow through on weight-loss programs and tend to achieve their physique goals.
This is true because most, if not all, of the goals we set require underlying habits, decision-making capacity, emotional tolerance, and so on to support them. Otherwise, when reality introduces stress, boredom, or resistance, the goal collapses.
“Setting a goal fundamentally means that you are trying to change in some way who you are. If you were already that person, you would have already achieved that goal,” says Nicolas Cole.
To achieve your goals next year, you have to become someone fundamentally different, depending on the size of the goal, or incrementally different, which would require you to adopt one or two new habits.
Without making core behaviour changes, however difficult they are, you cannot pursue your goals, much less achieve or sustain them.
So, if you’re serious about achieving your goals in the next year, identify the behaviour change you need to make first.
And that’s it!
There’s no better list of things to do than that. Forget about your list of resolutions, you’ve made them before (I bet at least once) and failed.
Change your behaviour first.
Some people think that if they achieve the goal, they will be better people. But the reverse is the case. You have to become the better person first, and then the goal arrives as a natural byproduct.
This principle is universally applicable. As Ibukun Awosika says, “Your attitude towards money will make or destroy you.”
Are you the person you need to be to achieve what you want next year?