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Have your new year’s resolutions already failed? It wouldn’t be surprising. Resolving to do something usually doesn’t help you make a lasting change. Let me show you what does.

New Year’s resolutions tend to fail because they’re not structured to facilitate success. They rely solely on that initial burst of motivation, which is often very strong at the beginning, but fades quickly and can be easily sabotaged by even a small failure. Resolutions give you no tools for creating the daily habitual behaviours you need to reach your goals, and no help maintaining your motivation over time.

If you truly want to build a new habit, you need to think differently and structure differently.

Get Your Thinking Aligned with Success

First, realize that you will only be successful if the change you’re pursuing is something you want. Focusing on what others want or on what you think you “should” do won’t work. Period. Why is this the case? Because change requires effort and you won’t be motivated to put in the effort over the long term if the change isn’t something you want to achieve.

Second, you need to cultivate a “growth mindset”. This term was coined by Dr. Carol Dweck as a result of her research into students’ attitudes about failure (see https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/). Dweck discovered those who view failure as a minor setback also realize success comes from hard work over time. People with a growth mindset are willing to put in the effort to succeed, therefore, they achieve more. When they fail, they learn from their failure, adjust their approach, and try again.

Structure Your Habit Building Efforts

Simply put, success is a result of long-term consistency in behaviours. This means your focus should be on building successful habits. Don’t fixate on your long-term goals. Put your attention and effort into your daily behaviour. Here’s how you do this:

Start small

When we feel motivated to make a big change, we also want results right away. We can imagine how wonderful life will be when we achieve success and we want that success right now! We want to jump in with both feet and do everything we can to succeed. But, you’ve tried this, right? Does it work? Usually not. Usually, that initial burst of energizing motivation lasts no more than a few days. Then you begin to feel like your goals are out of reach.

The trick is to change focus and start small. I mean very, very small. You know success comes from consistent behaviour, so instead of focusing on the goal, focus on the behaviour necessary to reach the goal. You’re going to start by creating a habit. Only when the habit is successfully in place will you begin to focus on performance and results.

To create a habit, you need to choose a behaviour that is so easy and so small you can’t fail. For example (and since this is a mindfulness blog), imagine you’ve decided you want to meditate every day. Your small, easy behaviour might be taking three mindful breaths every day. That’s it. Just three mindful breaths.

At this point, you might feel some resistance to my advice. You might be thinking, “How will I ever become a meditator if I don’t meditate?” Your resistance will be particularly strong if you’re highly motivated to reach your goals, because you’ll be in that phase where you are impatient for success.

Please realize, there’s a method to my madness. Remember, your first goal is to establish a strong habit. You need to choose a behaviour that is so easy you cannot possibly fail to do it. Once that habit becomes ingrained,