As humans, we’re not very good at keeping promises to ourselves. Take New Year’s resolutions. Year after year we tell ourselves this lie: “After the Holidays I’ll get my fitness/finances/waistline/relationships back on track.” And what happens? Our resolutions stall out after a few weeks and the sting of regret hangs in the air like wet laundry over a long-ignored Peloton bike.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. Research shows four out of five New Year’s resolutions (81%) will be abandoned by mid-January. In fact, fitness app Strava found the majority of users had given up on their New Year’s resolutions by January 19 (aka national “Quitter’s Day”).

Here’s something that may surprise you, however. Most resolutions don’t fail due to lack of willpower. They fail because we set goals that are way too ambitious. If you haven’t run a quarter mile since junior high school gym class, don’t resolve to run a marathon within six months. You might be able to pull that off in the movies, but in real life, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment, injury and an unhealthy relapse.

However, if you start with 20 minutes of walking a day with a goal of completing a 5K run in six months, your odds of success go up exponentially. And from there, you can talk about completing a 10K or half-marathon before year-end with even more ambitious goals in 2027.

Whether we’re talking about fitness, finances, weight loss or relationships, behavior modification is hard. That’s why it’s so important to “test drive” your resolutions for a month or two before making a full commitment. This honeymoon period gives you time to see how much you can really handle and make course corrections along the way. If life is too hectic to start your test drive now, move the test drive to January with the goal of setting your 2026 resolutions in February.

Here are four tips for making the test-drive period even more effective:

1. Be SMART.New Year’s resolutions are a form of behavior modification. To make this changing mindset stick, you want to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time Specific).Dan McMahon,

   managing partner of Integrated Growth Advisors, is a former football tight-end and no stranger to the ups and downs of weight change. A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Dan told me about his audacious goal to lose 40 pounds by May 1, 2026. Dropping 40 pounds may sound like a lot – especially when starting right before the Holidays — but that works out to less than seven pounds per month or less than two pounds per week. Not a huge sacrifice and with the gradual approach, he’ll have plenty of time to make mid-course corrections.

In fact, without reducing his overall calories, Dan lost 18 pounds in the first two weeks of his journey. No pills or magic formulas here. He simply reduced the amount of carbs he was eating by about 90% and consumed more protein and fat to stay off hunger. He has also maintained his four-day-per-week exercise routine throughout the process.

While it might be tempting for Dan to get to his 40-pound weight loss goal way ahead of schedule, Dan’s sticking to the timetable, so he doesn’t peak too early and gain all the weight back. He told me the other day: “The easy pounds have been shed – mostly water weight and beer weight. Now the real work begins and I’m not going to rush it.”

2. Be consistent.As the old saying goes: “Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. Don’t make excuses. Find a way to do the work to the best of your ability and don’t beat yourself up when you have an off-day or a cheat day. Just keep making a little progress every day and move the ball down the field one yard at a time. My post Consistency Is Not Boring has more.
3. Turn resolutions into ingrained habits to make them more relatable. For example:

• Resolution: Quit smoking vs. Ingrained Habit: Stop smoking that one cigarette you have every morning after breakfast.
• Resolution: Eat healthy food vs. Ingrained Habit: Start substituting that one daily morning pastry for a banana.
• Resolution: Lose weight vs. Ingrained Habit: Every evening after work, go for a two to three-minute run or walk around the block.
• Resolution: Manage stress vs. Ingrained Habit: Meditate for two to three minutes every morning after you wake up.
• Resolution: Improve finances vs. Ingrained Habit: Save an extra 2 percent of each paycheck and put half into my 401(k)s low-cost index fund and the other half into a high-yield savings account at your bank.

*** For more on making resolutions habit forming, see Sahil Bloom’s 30 for 30 Challenge.

4. Have an accountability partner.As the old saying goes, “it’s easier to let down yourself than it is to let down someone you trust.” Share your resolution with a person you can trust who won’t let you make excuses or talk you out of striving toward your goal.

Conclusion

Eating an entire elephant is impossible. But taking it one bite at a time makes a daunting challenge seem manageable. Tweak your resolutions all year long (See Step 4) and don’t beat yourself up for falling short. Instead of throwing in the towel, dust yourself, get back on the horse and set more realistic goals for the remainder of 2023.

As Napolean Hill famously said: “A goal is just a dream with a deadline.”  Take your goals for a test drive before diving in. Come MLK Day you’ll be glad you did.

How do you plan to stick to your resolutions in 2026? I’d love to hear from you.

#resolutions, #selfimprovement, #dedication, #goalsetting, #30for30