Handling the Holidays Part 5: Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail—and How to Set Healthier Ones

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For many of us, December 31st involves friends, parties, drinks, and watching the ball drop in Times Square, followed by January 1st, which involves a commitment to start a new habit or improve some behavior. Among the most common New Year’s Resolutions are losing weight, exercising more, being better with money, and some form of improving physical or mental health. In 2025, ABC Fitness (owner of gyms such as Planet Fitness, Anytime Fitness, Crunch, UFC Gym and Gold's Gym) reported that it had 1.9 million new sign-ups in January; and it is estimated that roughly 40% of people who sign up for a gym in January don’t return after January and 80% quit within 5 months. As a therapist, I notice that many of my clients feel pressure to have a resolution, start a new habit, or make a change, and so often their motivation fades and their old habits return as the year progresses. Part of why they do this is the principle of inertia…an object in motion wants to stay in motion, and an object at rest wants to stay at rest. When it comes to habits, it can be challenging to gain momentum. Once we have a good habit going, it's easier to keep it going. Going from stop to start is the hard part. So, the beginning of a new year can provide us the motivation to start something new. If you’re wondering why your New Year’s resolutions fail and want to feel success past February, consider these suggestions to start your resolutions off right.

Start from a Place of Enoughness

I believe that this is the most important principle to both setting and keeping meaningful and helpful New Year’s resolutions. You need to start from a place of already believing that you are enough. You’re not too much or not enough, you are just right. If you start a new pattern, behavior, or habit with the belief that “I’ll be good enough when ____, I’ll do the thing when _____, I’ll be worthy of ____when____,” two things often happen…you experience either shame or rebellion. Shame can come when you work hard at the new habit you are trying to form and either end up not meeting your goal or not actually feeling better about yourself even if you do. It can result in you beating yourself up, pushing your expectations even higher or wondering why you don’t feel better about yourself despite all your hard work. When this frustration, confusion or disappointment turns inward, it can look like shame…believing that you are not good, worthy or valuable. You feel like a failure as a person and want to just give up. When you turn it outward, it can look like rebellion…getting angry and stubborn at the gym, the diet, capitalism, the culture, the cosmos. You say, “Screw it! I’m not buying into these stupid expectations! I quit!”. This can happen even if your goal or habit was genuinely something you wanted for yourself. The problem is that goals, habits and behaviors aren’t what actually make us feel good enough. They don’t fundamentally represent our worth or value. That comes from the inside out. Value is something that we all have and we must simply believe about ourselves: We are worthy and valuable because we exist. If you use your New Year’s resolutions as a way to feel “enough”, you set yourself up for failure from the start because they will never accomplish that goal. If you start from a place of feeling like you are enough, new goals, habits and behaviors can enhance certain aspects of your being, and help you feel healthier physically, emotionally, relationally, or spiritually.

Start on a Wednesday

Most often, we try to start a new habit at the beginning of something. We wait until the beginning of a new week, month, or year or the start of a new season. Many times I have said to myself, “I’ll (get more exercise, be on my phone less, drink more water) starting (Monday, after the holidays, after Labor Day)”. A common scenario for me then becomes a binging/savoring during the days leading up to that. I lay around drinking pop and playing games on my phone because I am soon going to be restricting those things and I want to enjoy them before they go away. This inevitably makes the new habit even harder to start because the old habit has become even more entrenched. If the habit falters, I then have to wait until the beginning of another new week or month to start again. To break out of this vicious cycle, consider starting your new habit, goal or behavior on a Wednesday, or the 12th of the month, or in April. Try just starting when it’s on your mind or the motivation strikes, whenever it is. Make “just starting” one of your new habits rather than waiting for some significant marker to give you the motivation. The times when I have just started something at the time I had the idea or motivation have sometimes yielded the most success, and for sure have made it easier to start again whenever I needed to with less ramp-up time.

Start Small

A major problem with goal-setting success is often choosing too many goals or too aggressive a goal. Deciding to exercise more, eat better, limit screen time, and read more books are all great goals, but trying to do all of them at once is a setup for overload. By the same token, having the goal of working out every day or reading 30 minutes a day leaves little room for error. It takes a certain amount of both mental and physical energy just to change a pattern. You have to intentionally think about things that are not on autopilot, so giving yourself multiple different habits to try and focus on changing is likely to overwhelm your capacity. Success feels motivating. When we do something well and feel good about our accomplishments, we feel more motivation to do it again and keep the momentum going. If your goal is to do a new habit every day and you miss only one day in the week, you have already failed, and motivation goes down. If your goal is to do something two or three times a week, you give yourself some margin for a bad day or something unexpected to occur. When those things happen and you still meet your goal, you feel good about yourself and want to do more. As the smaller goal becomes a habit itself, it is easier to increase the reps at that point…when inertia is already moving it that direction. If you’ve had difficulty holding on to resolutions in the past, consider starting with fewer and smaller goals.

It could be that this year you need to focus on accepting and celebrating your enoughness

Start by Listening

Maybe New Year’s resolutions feel like one big guilty “should” for you. You “should” do more or less of this or you “should” start this new habit. Guilt is a poor motivator and is likely to lead to resentment and rebellion. If you don’t have a clear goal that you really feel excited and motivated about, it might not be the time to start. It might be time to listen. Listen to your body. Listen to your heart and mind. Listen to those closest to you. What are you hearing about what feels good and where you have needs? What do you notice about where you are experiencing lack or over-indulgence? It could be that your New Year’s resolution is to notice more and be more present with yourself and others to take in exactly what your goals for the future should be. Don’t just hop on the resolution bandwagon. It could be that this year you need to focus on accepting and celebrating your enoughness.

The New Year can be a good time to give you the motivation to start a new habit or work on a new goal. Give yourself the best chance at success by setting goals that work for you and remembering that you are already worth celebrating!

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7 Minute Shift

(Because you can’t do anything with quality in 5 minutes and who the hell has 10 minutes lying around!)

1.Pick one goal or resolution you want to focus on in 2026.

2. Run it through each of the points above to refine it and make it something that works for you and your needs.

Looking for More?

Read Parts 1-4 for more helpful strategies on managing holiday stress. If you want further help in setting goals and working towards self-improvement, I’d love to walk with you in that process. At All Things New Therapy, I help women in Minnesota improve themselves and their relationships. Schedule a free consultation or learn more about Therapy Retreats in Minnesota today.