8 billion people in the world have said this once or twice: “This year is my year!”, but around 90% of the population fail at the goals they set for themselves, and most of the time it only lasts a couple of months. There is only 1% of the population that actually achieved their goals for 11 – 12 months.[1] Since this is a repetitive behavior of human actions, it raises the question, why do we do this? Well, there are multiple physiological facts that can answer this question.
Habits
Most of the time the average amount of people try to break bad habits of theirs, but that is the exact reason why they fail to succeed. “Your new goal doesn’t necessarily need to be a counteract to the one you’re breaking, but just something that puts your mind somewhere other than your bad habit” [2]. Trying to break a bad habit doesn’t necessarily work, it’s difficult since you might have been doing it for years now, and our brain can’t just switch of a button. Instead of setting complete opposite goals for yourself, it’s better to set goals that might make your bad habit turn into a small one.or example, if you watch a lot of Youtube or TikTok videos, doing your work for a few hours then taking a break and watching social media for an hour is more likely to achieve, and the more you succeed the more that time will decrease.
Vague
Moving on, most of the goals that people create for the new year are unplanned and unprepared. Some examples of goals that are vague are, traveling, going on a diet, finding a job, doing a sport, reading more books, and the list goes on. All of these goals are statements and these are the most goals that come up with problems, for example traveling means that you need a lot of money and when you don’t have enough you just give up on it, or finding a new job, although this might seem easy at first, getting a job that has good payment, in your range, and an enjoyable environment is difficult. Not to mention, being more specific about your goals results in them being more likely to succeed. For example, if you want to travel more, you should save up a part of my money to travel one place each year, or something similar to that [3].
Unrealistic Goals
Although there are multiple reasons why our new years goals don’t succeed, being unrealistic is a big one. When people set goals that are way too high, they tend to fall apart. For example, ‘I will become a singer this year or I will read a billion books’. It’s better to set smaller and more achievable goals. When you don’t succeed in them, which most likely you want, you will be left unmotivated and feel bad about yourself [3].
[2] – https://www.unc.edu/discover/how-to-break-a-bad-habit/