The Psychology Reason 90% of New Year’s Resolutions Fail

0:00Damien Hughes:90 % of people that set a New Year's resolution, like people might be doing now as they're listening to this. I think the stat is that if you go six months later, only 14 % will still be pursuing it. So as this episode comes out, Damien, it will be the start of the year. And we know that people will be, they would have done their ice baths. They would have cleaned their fridges out. They would have set their goals and they would have established their New Year's resolutions and their habits. As you think about people doing this, where will people typically go wrong so that in two months' time they've kind of messed it up and it's a car crash?

0:34Damien Hughes:well again so it's a really good question but i'd i'd avoid even using pejorative terms like right or wrong there's no right or wrong you know what i mean like most people are doing the best aren't they and where sometimes does our best fall short well there's some there's some reasons behind it i think and there's research on this that says that like out of 90 of people that's at a new year's resolution like people might be doing now as they're listening to this i think the stat is that if you go six months later only 14 will still be pursuing it so there's something called the say do gap right is that that that psychology talks about this idea that people talk a really good game and it's not that they're not committed and they don't mean to get healthier or they don't mean to be more successful or they don't mean to journal more but the doing it is often difficult and it's in that gap where you say so what can we do different the easy way is to think of it in so in first of all do something really small right don't don't try and change your life because you don't need to change your life right so do something really small just commit to something that like i'm gonna floss after brushing my teeth do you know what i mean it's something like as really simple as that you're going to brush your teeth anyway so so floss or something like that or you'll just do i've spoke to some people like dr rongan chatterjee that talks about when he's making a cup of tea in the morning he just does like some squats you know i mean so that's like the first smallest step he could do about i want to get a bit healthy i'm just going to squat while i'm waiting for the kettle tomorrow because i'm going to be waiting anyway so do something really small the second one is do something quite simple don't don't it like if it costs you money or if it involves sort of making huge like huge significant investments you're probably not going to do it so keep it really simple right so like that idea of wrong and doing his squats not costing him any money and he's going to be waiting for the kettle spoil anyway and then the other one is just just make it's something you can do quickly so something that is not going to take up a huge amount of time because most of us are time poor aren't we you know like you guys know it you've got kids they're looking after your kids running the business doing your podcast doing all the other things where like the idea of carving out an hour somewhere in your day can feel quite intimidating but you can carve out five minutes so i think if we do that things make it small make it simple and make it speedy that you can do, we start to narrow the say-do gap and then it stops us feeling that we're going wrong or we're making a mistake or we're making an error because then that just reinforces the sense of failure and we get ourselves in that spiral.

3:29Damien Hughes:What we want is a sense of progress and those three areas allow us to narrow the gap of what we say we're going to do and then actually following through and doing it.