Let’s talk about how to form new habits that stick. Okay, okay, I’m curious… raise your hand if you were totally fired up at the beginning of this month to start afresh, change your life, or maybe flip one or two bad habits into better ones? Yup, me too. Now, keep your hand raised if you stuck with it all?

Energetically, I just felt a ton of hands went down all around the world… woof, me too! I think if we step back and zoom out a bit, we’d see that there is so much more at play here then what we thought at first glance. 

Why do we, as humans, seem to have a hard time setting and sticking with new habits?

First off, let’s look at the data. Many studies have been done on New Year’s resolutions but let’s take a look at this one. John Norcross of the National Library of Medicine states that people typically have an 81% failure rate when it comes to their New Year’s resolutions. 

81%!! That’s basically saying, 4 out of 5 people who set one don’t stick with them, but rather fall back into their old habits and patterns before they know it. But why is that?

Author James Clear (of Atomic Habits) has some ideas here… he believes there are 5 common mistakes that cause new habits to fail:

1. Trying to change everything at once

   1. Instead, try to pick one thing and do it well.

2. Starting with a habit that is too big

   1. It’s better to make this new habit super small and easy where you just can’t say no.

3. Seeking a result