A Matter of Perspective

It’s a new year. 2026. I never thought I would see it. But here it is with all its potential for being the best year yet!

Every year has this potential. It’s like January arrives and we suddenly are filled with all the ideas and thoughts about things we want to accomplish in the new year. And then, about a week or a month later a whole lot of people either forget about their goals or simply do not have the drive or ambition to carry through with their plans.

According to Drive Research, only about 9% of people successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions through the year.

About 23% give up their intentions within the first week of January and approximately 43% give up by the end of January.

Those first few weeks of the New Year are vital to the success or failure of our resolutions.

In a report from FOX 13 Tampa, as high as 88% abandon their resolutions within the first two weeks of the year!

According to a report on Medium, around 80% of people discontinue their resolutions by February.

As you can see, the numbers are quite high for the quit rate on our New Years’ goals!

In fact, according to Defender Network, some surveys show many people give up even earlier, with the average “Quitter’s Day” reported as early as the second Friday in January.

But it is that 6-9% of people that are still diligent in pursuing their goals, plans, resolutions after a year.

According to the article on Medium, “Researchers and psychologists attribute this high dropout rate to things like unrealistic goal setting, lack of specific plans, loss of motivation once novelty wears off, and not forming lasting habits first.”

There are some very good and specific reasons this happens and it isn’t because people are lazy. It is because we don’t design our goals in a way that our brains can sustain them.

Think about it, most resolutions are emotion-driven, not system-driven. And that is a big problem because our emotions are usually not good decision makers!

Most resolutions are born from a burst of emotion like guilt, frustration, fear and hope.

While emotions can start change, they cannot sustain it.

Second, our goals are often too big or too vague. Because the goals don’t give our brains a clear daily action, it defaults back to what is familiar and comfortable.

Reaching goals is typically very uncomfortable. According to the Late Jim Rohn, if we want to reach our goals, we have to “embrace discomfort.” For most of us (as high as 94%) change is not worth the cost of our comfort.

The third reason that most New Years resolutions don’t stick is because people try to change their identity overnight!

If we set a goal to lose weight, for example, (which is quite vague), and we still see ourselves as someone who always quits and can’t stick to things, our subconscious mind will eventually pull us back into our old patterns and habits—no matter how motivated we start out.

Lastly, without having small daily wins, our brains don’t receive the dopamine hit that we get when we have successes on our goals (the number gets smaller on the scale).

Without the emotional reward (dopamine), our brains tell us it is not worth the effort.

If you want to know how to set goals that actually stick, check out my column next week.

While these won’t be your typical New Year’s resolutions, at least if you wait a week to set the goals, you won’t quit them in the first week!