WRITTEN BY ALICIA KOCH, FOUNDER OF THE LEGAL BELLETRIST
Why resolutions fail without self-awareness
Isn’t it funny how, as the clock strikes 12 on December the 31st, social media is awash with posts about New Year’s Resolutions: “This will be the year I finally lose the baby weight” or “2025 is my year to get fit” or better still “This is the year I make a million quid”.
Endless empty promises dominating your news feeds that you just know will be broken the minute the going gets tough.
Because let’s be honest, no one’s problems – whether they are health issues, mental health issues, family problems, work problems, weight problems, financial problems – disappear the minute the calendar changes from the 31st to the 1st. The rolling over the date doesn’t make problems disappear. So yeah, the same stuck feeling continues.
The idea that New Year’s Day offers a “clean slate” or a “New Year, New You” type mentality is so misleading. Sure, it’s easy to believe that as the new year starts, we get the opportunity to turn over a new leaf. And who can blame our optimism?
But while January the 1st offers an opportunity for a fresh start; the underlying habits and mindsets that led to past failures don’t just disappear overnight.
Real change takes time, and it requires a real shift in mindset.

The notion that we can completely change ourselves in the blink of an eye is unrealistic. Sustainable transformation doesn’t happen as soon as we change our minds about a situation. And it certainly won’t happen in the first 31 days of the year. It’s a long-term process that extends far beyond the novelty of a new year.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that New Year’s Resolutions are a part of the festivities. Everyone is doing them. So, it’s only natural that you’ll get caught up in the whole hoopla that the new year offers. And what it offers more than anything else is hope.
Hope that change can happen. Hope that you can make a difference in some aspect of your life. And there’s nothing wrong with hope. It’s the expectations behind the hope that need some adjusting.
Because while our intentions are good – they reflect our desire for self-improvement (which is never a bad thing) – we need to remain realistic. The uncomfortable truth is that most new year’s resolutions won’t last until February. According to Psychology Today, research shows that about 80% of people abandon their resolutions within a month.
And the reason for this? We are so quick to set unrealistic goals that we rarely vet our resolutions through the filter of self-awareness. In other words, we gravitate towards aspirational objectives that make sense for someone else – not being entirely realistic for ourselves personally.
Let’s be clear – this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set New Year’s Resolutions. Go ahead. But inform your goals by reflecting on what matters most to you.
And you can do this by implementing the following strategies:

Get to know yourself – to set realistic and achievable goals for 2025 (and beyond), you need to understand what really makes you tick. What motivators get you moving and which ones get you to stay on track? Use your answers to bypass self-sabotaging tendencies that cause you to constantly miss your goals, such as trying to work toward big-picture achievements on Fridays when you know you do your best thinking work on Mondays. As you begin to get a better handle on your needs, create smaller, easily achievable tasks that can assist you in fulfilling your larger longer-term objectives. Here, it’s important that these smaller tasks have meaning and will aid in the achievement of your overall yearly objective. A simple tick-box exercise isn’t going to do the trick. “Find smoothie recipes I will actually make,” for example, is a concrete step toward an overall goal of eating healthier in 2025. Over time, you’ll naturally begin to understand how to establish new dreams that help you get out of ruts, overcome your shortcomings, and challenge yourself in positive ways, thereby setting goals that will stick.

Explore the enneagram – following on from the above, by exploring the enneagram method with a trained professional such as Frieda Levycky at Braving Boundaries, you can delve into what motivates you and answer a burning question – why do you do the things you do? The enneagram offers profound insights into what makes us tick, such as the unconscious fears buried deep in our psyches that affect our everyday decisions. While you can’t change who you are, there are several benefits to having a deeper understanding of yourself – you can make the most of your strengths and become aware of the things that challenge you; you can face the hidden motivations and fears that rule your life and are holding you back in both your personal and professional life; you can see what lies behind the decisions you make, why you see the world the way you do, where your blind spots and defence mechanisms are, what’s behind your anxieties, and what’s likely to trigger you. Essentially you can live up to your true potential and identify where you can grow and develop. By knowing these things, you can set resolutions that speak to exactly who you are. Because you will know who that is. You will set goals that speak to your specific needs and desires and you’ll be able to set goals that you know you’ll be able to stick to.


Focus your mind on past successes – while you’re getting to know yourself (pretty well at this point), looking to past failures and ruminating on past wins is the next step. To be clear, the aim is not to focus on the negative. Rather it’s to learn from past mistakes and then reset your focus on your past achievements – how did you achieve what you set out to achieve? By doing so, you shift your focus from “How will I achieve this?” to “I know I can do this, because I have done it before.” Having a positive outlook is essential to achieving the new goals you set for yourself because you will have a resilient, success-driven mindset. When you find yourself lamenting too long on prior mistakes, force yourself to revisit your accomplishments. Over time, you’ll naturally begin to look for the silver lining, which will help you see yourself as worthy, competent, and successful rather than unable to get a leg up. Your resolutions will start to fall into place because you’ll know you have done it before. And that’s half the battle won.

Reframe your why – the next step in getting to know yourself and really practicing the act of self-awareness is to take the time to ask yourself why this particular goal matters to you. Are you choosing it because it’s something you deeply value, or because you feel you should? Is it something you really want to achieve – and by now if you have really got to know yourself and employed the enneagram method, you should be able to answer this question – or is this goal linked more towards what society thinks you should be achieving. Like getting a ”Snatched body” or a “revenge body” by March. Aligning your goals with intrinsic motivations creates a greater sense of purpose. So, in the examples we have given, instead of focusing on “getting a revenge body by March” reframe your resolution around “feeling stronger and having more energy so I can do fun activities with family.” See the difference there? Make sure you’re setting goals for you and not because society expects you to.

Forget perfection – the last point we want to make about making resolutions through self-awareness is the perfection conundrum. The pressure that comes with expecting perfection from your new year’s resolution is immense. It’s the enemy of progress. And it’s a sure-fire way to set ourselves up to fail by aiming for an ideal that is simply too hard to achieve. Resolutions like “I’m going to work out every day,” or “I’m going to eat clean all month,” are doomed to fail from the start because they leave little room for imperfection. Remember that life happens. Don’t let one slip-up on the road to achieving your long-term goal lead you to giving up. The key to success isn’t perfection. It’s consistency. The smallest changes, done consistently can make a big difference in your life. Don’t give up.

Once your resolution has gone through the self-awareness check, the rest is easy. Sure, we can remind you to have fun, don’t take yourself too seriously, track your progress (not your perfection); be flexible and most importantly be kind to yourself – but these points are applicable to every situation. Not just when setting your resolutions or better put – goals – for 2025.
The important take-away here is that change isn’t just about acting. It’s about knowing yourself first in order to make your goals achievable. Lastly, it’s important to note that you don’t need to wait until January to start over. Every day is an opportunity to reshape your life with goals that honour who you are and where you want to go.
And to this we say – Carpe Diem friends!
(Sources used and to whom we owe thanks: Inc.; Psychology Today here and here; Very Well Mind; Drops of Ink and Forbes).

Click here to visit The Legal Belletrist website. Email: [email protected]