5 Reasons Why New Year's Resolutions Fail

Year after year, many New Year's Resolutions are made and many New Year's Resolutions fail. Here's my take on the top 5 reasons why New Year's Resolutions fail. (and mini-bits of advice on how to avoid failure.)

5)Too Many New Year's Resolutions.

An interesting reason why New Year's Resolutions fail is because there are too many of them. People will make a grocery list of things that want to accomplish for the New Year. Eventually, the list goes into the garbage, and all 50 or so New Year's Resolutions are forgotten. Unless you're making a list of a bunch of small things that can be done pretty easily, it's best to have just one or two New Year's Resolutions that you can dedicate yourself to doing.

4) Inability to perform the goals.

Every year, plenty of New Year's Resolutions are made that just aren't possible for the person who came up with them to achieve. Sometimes, it's things that just can't be done within the time period of a year, and sometimes it's things that the person is completely incapable of performing. When thinking up a New Year's Resolution, make sure you can at least do it, because if you aren't able to even start up the goal that is your New Year's Resolution, you have a zero percent chance of success.

3) Lack of dedication or will.

Most New Year's Resolutions are goals that can be achieved by the average human being. However, one problem that tends to come up with New Year's Resolutions are the lack of dedication to do them or a lack of will to maintain them. Within the first few weeks of the New Year, many people find themselves trying out their Resolution, but for whatever reason, they'll end up failing to continue whatever they were doing. A very important key to following through with a New Year's Resolution is to have the dedication to do so and have the will power to keep it going, no matter how difficult it may turn out to be.

2) Lack of tangible reward or punishment.

Many New Year's Resolutions that are made have no tangible reward or no tangible punishment. Without a reward for accomplishing a New Year's Resolution, people may find it hard to make the change necessary for that goal. It's the same with the punishment; if not accomplishing a New Year's Resolution yields no kind of demeaning attributes, especially if you got through last year without having to do it, then you'll have little inspiration to follow through. This doesn't mean that you should make New Year's Resolutions just with rewards and/or punishments, but it does mean that you should realize that chances are, no one is going to reward you for your improvements, and that is something to keep in mind when doing New Year's Resolutions.

1) The Gimmick/Fad that is New Year's Resolutions

I believe that the number one reason why New Year's Resolutions fail is because they are New Year's Resolutions. They are made around the month of December, and the primary reason New Year's Resolutions are made isn't because they are things that need to be done (although they probably are things that need be done and changes that need to be made), but rather because it's the cool thing to do. It's like, "The New Year is coming! Let me make some New Year's Resolutions about things that I should be doing anyway but not going to do because it's the thing everybody is doing! YEAH!" If you make a New Year's Resolution not because the New Year is coming, but because you really want to make the change, do the thing, or accomplish a goal, you're much better off to do what you want to do.