Why Do New Year’s Resolutions Fail? Two Reasons
They Rarely Stick
At the writing of this article we’re about a month into 2023.
Many of us have made—and let go of—New Year’s resolutions.
How about you?
Are your New Year’s resolutions still intact?
Or have they fallen by the wayside?
Whether it’s to lose weight, save money, or find a new job, we all have ambitious goals that we want to achieve in the upcoming year.
However, it’s no secret that most of us fail to stick with our resolutions.
In fact, a recent study found that only 8% of people actually achieve their New Year’s goals.
While there can be many reasons why resolutions fail, in this blog post we’ll be talking about the two main reasons that people fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail
Here’s a video I made on the two main reasons that our New Year’s resolutions fail:
If you get your edification in the form of audio podcasts listen below or look for the BioSoul Integration Podcast and this episode wherever you listen to your podcasts:
1) Timing
The Universe is constantly evolving, meaning it’s churning out new stuff and simultaneiously integrating that new stuff into the whole.
We are embedded in the fabric of life and so life is tugging on the threads of our being and urging us to evolve, too.
The unfolding of our evolution has a few distinct stages—themes that we cycle through each time we transform a layer of our defended self.
Often New Year’s resolutions take the form of taking action and committing to some new behavior.
But taking action and committing to some new behavior is just one of a dozen or so stages, themes or rhythms that emerge in us as life evolves us.
Have you ever heard anyone say, “This year I resolve to rest, listen and wait for what’s next?”
Have you ever heard anyone exclaim, “I resolve to feel the stuckness more fully in 2023?”
Probably not, but those statements represent other crucial themes that show up during the course of our evolution, over and over again.
Taking action and changing behaviors is perfectly in line with the New Year’s resolution tradition, but it may not be in line with the particular stage of your evolution that is unfolding on January 1st.
There are stages to the healing process, one of which is all about committing to yourself
and resolving to take action in your life in alignment with that new commitment.
The trick to the smoothest healing experience is to connect with the particular stage that
the most of you is in at the moment.
When you do that, what’s required of you becomes effortless.
When you’re trying to make a stage happen it requires a lot of effort and is going to be
very hard to sustain.
So though the new year is a good time to make a resolution, the timing may not be right
for you.
Pay closer attention to the themes that are coming up in your life and see if you can trust
them a little more.
2) Unconscious Motivations
The second reason that resolutions fizzle has to do with the motivation for making the
resolution in the first place.
I suggest that if we look closely we’d notice a subtle feeling of worthlessness and a story
that goes something like, “Ugh, I hate how overweight I am. Or What is wrong with me, I’ve
got to get my shit together.”
In essence it’s the judgment, the unkindness, the pushing against a part of ourselves that propels us into the resolution.
But it’s a fact of healing that we can never push against a part of ourselves with enough
force to escape it.
The feeling of worthlessness and the story that goes along with it doesn’t go away just
because we look better in the mirror or because we’re more organized now.
Those feelings come from deep conditioning we picked up when we were in the womb and when we were little kids and they’re going to keep coming up.
So it becomes difficult to justify maintaining the new action when the reason for doing it
was so we didn’t have to feel the worthlessness or hear ourselves tell the story.
What we’ve got to do is bring more awareness to those feelings and the story and give it
permission to be felt without pushing it away.
In the process our heart is opening to a disowned part of ourselves and we’re integrating
that part.
When that part of us is more integrated we can hold it with compassion and when that’s
the case our resolutions tend to be motivated by the desire for greater wholeness.
When that’s coupled with the right timing, change will happen so quickly and completely
you won’t believe it.
The Next Step…
Want to learn more about how your body and being are connected to the grand timing of the universe?
Want to learn some tools for shining the light of conciousness on the unconscious parts of you that are controlling your life behind the scenes?
I’ve written a book called If It Didn’t Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose.
It’s the ultimate guide for connecting you to your authentic self, embodying your soul’s gifts and living your purpose.
Click the link to purchase, or if you’re not ready to buy just yet, you’ll have the option to get the first chapter for FREE.
I look forward to helping you express more life,
Jay
About the Author Dr. Jay Uecker
Dr. Jay is the founder and owner of BioSoul Integration Center in Louisville, Colorado. He’s a chiropractor, a hands-on healer, an in-person and online soul integration coach and the author of If It Didn't Hurt: How To Resolve Your Pain And Discover Your Life Purpose. For two decades Dr. Jay has been helping people navigate their healing journeys. Over the course of that time he’s worked intimately with thousands of people. Those who are most drawn to Dr. Jay's work are those who are seeking to integrate and embody their soul's essence and their soul's gifts so they can share them with others. Life will keep nudging us in that direction, anyway. BioSoul Integration helps to speed up the process and smooth out the rough spots created by the innocent and unconscious resistance that lives in our primal brain and nervous system. Click the link to get your Personalized BioSoul Integration Guide.
