Why Your New Year's Resolutions Fail (And What to Do Instead)
It's that time again.
You're standing at the edge of a new year, making the same promises you made last January. This year will be different. This year you will ‘finally’ get it together. You will be more focussed, have more energy. This year you will get a handle of your diary. You will ensure your days don’t just disappear in meetings. You will use the quiet period to get ahead. You will plan your time more deliberately. You will work out more, eat better, drink less…
But if you're honest with yourself, there's a quiet voice asking: Will anything actually change?
Because you've been here before, we all have. You have defined your goals, you have a plan, your motivated…but yet every new year you seem to just be adding the unachieved goals from the year prior. It feels demoralising really. You are competent, you can work most things out, but when it comes to goals for yourself achieving them seems to elude you.
So what's going on? Are you just not disciplined enough? Not motivated enough? Not committed enough?
Nope. The problem isn't you. The problem is the approach. Because New Year's resolutions are designed to fail.
Why Resolutions Don't Work
Frustrated after years of breaking new year resolutions, I finally found worked out what was going on. You see most of us set goals based on what we think we should be. More productive, more in control, skinnier, healthier, stronger. And we are operating from the belief that if we just try harder, push more, optimise better, we will finally get there.
But what that approach doesn’t address is:
Why you're exhausted in the first place.
The patterns keeping you stuck - such as relying on willpower
Your dysregulated nervous system.
The beliefs driving your behaviour.
Setting goals without addressing the root causes that current drive the action you are taking, is like trying to drive forward with the handbrake still on. You can press the accelerator as hard as you want, but you're not going anywhere until you release what's holding you back.
After years of my own failed resolutions and now coaching clients through this exact cycle, three things I consistently see get in peoples way are:
1: You're Setting Goals, Not Building Systems
A goal is what you want. A system is how you get there. "I want to be healthier" is a goal.
A system is: Meal planning every Sunday, workouts scheduled in calendar, accountability partner checking in weekly.
"I want better work-life balance" is a goal.
A system is: Hard stop at 6pm, no emails after dinner, calendar blocks for family time, nervous system regulation practices built into your day.
Most people set goals and then rely on motivation and willpower to achieve them. But motivation fades. Willpower is finite. And when they're gone, so is your resolution.
Systems don't rely on motivation. They're structures that carry you forward even when you don't feel like it.
Think about your corporate career. You don't just "set a goal" to deliver a project. You build a system: milestones, check-ins, resources, accountability. You treat it like the important work it is.
Once I started applying the same level of planning into my own goals as I did with work, I was finally able to achieve my goals and create new ones each year (and so now, rather than the new year be a time I would dread, as it was just a reminder of what I did not achieve, instead it is something I look forward to.
2: You're Not Addressing Your Nervous System
For years I was running on stress and adrenaline. One year I decided that I was going to going to add morning meditation, daily workouts, meal prep, journaling, and "better boundaries" to my already overwhelming schedule.
Within three weeks, I was even more exhausted than before. So I would inevitably quit, and beat myself up, telling myself I had no self control.
But here's what was actually happening: My nervous system was dysregulated. And so all I was doing was just piling more onto a system that was already overloaded.
The truth is that you can’t build new habits on top of a dysregulated nervous system. It doesn't work, at least not in the long run. Why? Because if you are chronically in fight-or-flight, your body and brain are focused on survival, not growth. You literally don't have the cognitive or emotional resources to sustain new behaviors. Change requires you to do things differently to how you have always done them, your brain doesn’t like change and so you need your prefrontal cortex firing if you want to be able to do things differently.
This is often one of the reasons why you know what you "should" do but can't seem to do it consistently.
3: You're Operating from the Same Beliefs
There is always a belief that sits behind every new year resolution. And most come from a version of not being enough; good enough, productive enough, fit enough and so on. The problem with these beliefs are that they are the same that drove you to exhaustion. They are common fuel for so many over achievers, always pushing, stretching, not to beat others, but to beat their own illusive measure.
(side note: if you are unsure if you fall into this category, as yourself, what good enough is for you. If you can’t define it, or it seems ambiguous, know you are not alone!).
When you try and create change from the exact same mindset that created the problem. Nothing shifts.
I did this for years. Every January, I'd set goals to "be better" work smarter, exercise more, be more present. But underneath all of it was the belief that I wasn't enough as I was.
So I'd push harder, trying to prove my worth through achievement. And it would work for a while — until I crashed again. The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to optimise my way to worthiness and started examining the beliefs driving my behavior. When I shifted from "I need to do more" to "I need to do things differently," everything changed.
What Actually Works Instead
So if resolutions don't work, what does? After years of trial and error and coaching my own clients through change here's what I know creates lasting transformation:
1. Start with Regulation, Not Optimisation
Before you add anything to your life, focus on regulating your nervous system.
This might sound counterintuitive. You want to achieve big things in 2026. But if you're starting from a place of chronic dysregulation, no goal will stick.
So instead of "I'm going to meditate every morning," start with:
Noticing when you're dysregulated
Practicing one 60 second regulation technique when you notice it
Building the skill of down regulating throughout your day
Once your nervous system is regulated, you'll have the capacity for everything else you want to build.
2. Build Systems, Not Goals
Take whatever you want to achieve and turn it into a system.
Ask yourself:
What specific actions will move me toward this?
When will I do them? (actual calendar time, not "when I can")
What support or accountability do I need? A huge change I made in finally achieving my goal of strength training, was recognising that I needed support and so joined a strength gym.
What will be the likely obstacles I will encounter?
What is my plan for overcoming each of those obstacles?
How will I track progress?
What will I do when (not if) I get off track?
You want to treat your goals with the same rigor that you do projects at work. Know what your contingencies are; plan, fail, adjust and go again…
3. Address the Beliefs Driving Your Behavior
This is the deeper work that most people skip. What are you making your goals mean about you? If you're setting resolutions from a place of "I'm not enough," you'll approach them with the same exhausting energy that got you here.
But if you can shift to "I'm worthy of support, and I'm choosing to invest in myself," the entire experience changes.
This is where coaching becomes helpful, as often we cannot see our own belief patterns because we are believing the stories we have been telling ourselves. Just the other day my coach highlighted a blind spot I had kept missing and as soon as she said it, the penny dropped and it reminded me that even as a coach, when you are emotionally attached to the story, it can be hard to see it as clearly as someone who is not emotionally attached.
4. Get Support
The belief that you should be able to do this alone is one a lot of my clients had before coming to me. And it makes sense, they were used to handling it all, the person everyone came to. I remember when I wanted to build a strength practise, for years I kept thinking, this should be easy, I had the plan, I knew what I needed to do, but each year I never actually did what I said I would do, until I admitted that for me it wasn’t easy and that I needed support. Once I admitted that, I fast tracked my results and now my strength training is just something I do, it is part of my identity, not a wish I keep adding to my new year goals.
Change happens faster with support. Find out what is holding you back from achieving your goals and then seek out the best person/thing that will support you in achieving that goal. Supplement your weakness, while you strengthen the muscle required to change your behaviours to those that have you taking the action to achieve your goal.
As you head into 2026
I encourage you to ask yourself: Do you want to set the same resolutions you set last year and hope for different results? Or do you want to actually do something different?
Because here's what I know: Hope is not a strategy. And repeating the same approach while expecting different outcomes is what will keep you stuck.. So as you go through this process, consider the above - check your nervous system, define your system, uncover underlying beliefs and then find the support you need to achieve your goals.
