The Reasons Personal Change Initiatives Fail

Overcoming the Hurdles to Personal Change 

The New Year is a time for a fresh start, a new set of challenges, a new list of personal objectives and goals. 

Typical New Year’s Resolutions lists include actions such as losing weight, paying off debt, exercising more, changing jobs, getting better organized, traveling to a particular place, and reading more books.

All of which, of course, require personal change.

Unfortunately we all fail, at times, to successfully make a personal change in our respective lives. Sometimes we learn from these failures; other times we do not.

Perhaps the most obvious example of failed personal change initiatives takes place during the annual New Year's Resolution ritual. Despite an abundance of motivation and sense of purpose assigned to these, the fact is that the large majority of New Year's Resolutions are abandoned within the first 90 days of each year. 

Why is this so?

There are many reasons for this, but the main ones we believe that contribute the most to any personal change effort failing to achieve the desired outcome are: 

• People do not make them top of mind -- every day. 
• Too many initiatives are attempted simultaneously. The typical New Year's Resolution list often reaches double-digit figures. 
• No prioritization. 
• People are not willing to say "no" to distractions and other initiatives. 
• No action plans. Often New Year's Resolutions lists are merely just wishing thinking that change will somehow magically happen. 
• We do not make the change into a daily habit. 
• We do not allow others to hold ourselves accountable, preferring to keep our change initiatives private to ourselves. 
• Goals are not quantifiable, and there are no interim milestones set. 
• We do not track our progress or keep journals, so we don't know what is working and what is hindering our progress. 

According to some scientific research, it takes on average 66 days for a new behavior to become a new habit. That's a little over two months! 

Now wonder so many people give up and abandon their personal change initiatives before reaching success. They typically quit too early in the process, often because they underestimate the time required to fully inculcate and instill a new behavior or a new change into their daily routines. 

Do not let this happen to you. Use the above list as a guideline to help ensure that you do not let these typical hurdles become hardened obstacles that prevent you fro successfully achieving your personal change initiatives. 

For more tips on how to overcome these hurdles, see our 7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Change.

And read yesterday's blog post on the 8 Steps for Making Successful New Year's Resolutions. 

These tips and techniques will help put you on a more successful path for achieving all you want to accomplish in 2017.

Lastly, to help you get and stay motivated throughout the year, our book Project You: Words of Wisdom, the current #1 motivational and self help book in the Amazon Kindle store, is free in Kindle format from now through January 3rd. It's also available in paperback for just $6.45. Get your copy now by clicking this link:  Project You Words of Wisdom. 

We wish you continued success in 2017.