Many Reasons Why We Fail At Personal Change

7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Improvement

The year is half over. For many of us those personal change goals we set back in January are no longer on track. What’s worse is that far too many will wait until next January to set themselves new personal improvement goals.

In fact, despite an abundance of motivation and sense of purpose we originally assign to our New Year’s Resolutions, the large majority of these personal change plans are abandoned within the first 90 days of each year. Research shows that 80% of all New Year’s Resolutions result in failure or are not achieved.

Why is this so? What causes such remarkable low results?

There are numerous reasons behind such dismal outcomes. We believe the main factors that contribute the most to any personal improvement effort failing to achieve the desired outcome are:

• People do not make the top of mind, each and every day. 
• People attempt too many initiatives simultaneously. This is particularly true at the start of the year when the typical New Year's Resolutions list reaches double-digit figures. 
• There is no prioritization, with each resolution being treating as equally important. 
• An unwillingness to just "say no" to distractions and other initiatives. 
• No concrete action plans. Just wishful thinking that change will somehow magically happen. 
• A failure to turn the desired change into a daily habit. 
• Not allowing others to hold us accountable. Keeping our change initiatives private to ourselves indicates we only have to answer to ourselves. And we are all too good at rationalizing our way out of making change. 
• Not putting our goals into a quantifiable format. 
• Not racking our progress or keeping journals to know what is working, and what is not.

 
Get Your Personal Improvement Goals Back on Track

Today, at the midpoint of the year, is a perfect time to review the progress of your personal improvement plans and implement our Mid-Year Resolutions game plan to re-ignite your personal change efforts.

To help you with this, our 7 Key Success Factors for Implementing Personal Change tips will help you overcome the hurdles listed above.

Scientific research shows that it takes on average 66 days for a new behavior to become a new habit. That’s a little over two months!

No wonder so many people give up and abandon their personal improvement plans before reaching success. They typically quit too early in the process as they underestimate the time required to fully inculcate and instill a new behavior or a new change into their daily routines.

Don’t let this happen to you. If you start today, you can have a new set of personal improvement habits in place before summer ends.

Go for it. Start Living A Determined Life by getting your personal improvement goals back on track. 

Please help others discover the power of Mid-Year Resolutions by sharing this post in your social media posts using the hashtag #MidYearResolutions. Many thanks. 

Learning From Setbacks

Failure Should Be Your Teacher, Not Your Undertaker 

All situations in life teach us something, particularly the ones we label failures and setbacks. The key to understanding these lessons is to treat failures and setbacks as learning opportunities and nothing more. Here is advice from motivational speaker Og Mandino on how to do this:

Whenever you make a mistake or get knocked down by life, don't look back at it too long. Mistakes are life's way of teaching you.

Your capacity for occasional blunders is inseparable from your capacity to reach your goals. No one wins them all, and your failures, when they happen, are just part of your growth.

Shake off your blunders. How will you know your limits without an occasional failure? Never quit. Your turn will come.

Many people have written about bouncing back and learning from setbacks. Here are six pertinent quotes you may want to refer to the next time you think you have failed at something:

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. ~ Denis Waitely

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed: and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying. ~ Tom Hopkins

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes. ~ William E. Gladstone

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~ Mary Pickford

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them. ~ Charles Caleb Cotton

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. ~ Hermann Hesse 

However, the best comment on this subject is this anonymous one: "Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker."

Remember, just as one solitary success does not make you a successful person, one failure or setback does not make you a failure.

No matter how many attempts it takes you to achieve a dream or a goal, as long as you exude continuous persistence in pursuit of your desires you will attain success in your life. 

We have more thoughts on personal growth and development, plus hundreds of motivational quotes, in our book Project You: Words of Wisdom. It is available at Amazon in paperback ($6.45) and Kindle ($3.88) formats. 

This article is partially excerpted from our top-ranked personal development book Project You: Living A Determined Life, which is also available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon. 

Key Reasons Why Personal Change Initiatives Fail

These are the typical hurdles that prevent successful personal change

Everyone fails, at times, to successfully implement a desired personal change in our respective lives. 

Sometimes we learn from these failures; many 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. And research shows that over 80% result in failure or are not achieved. 

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 the top of mind, each and every day. 
• People attempt too many initiatives simultaneously. This is particularly true at the start of the year when the typical New Year's Resolutions list reaches double-digit figures. 
• There is no prioritization, with each resolution being treating as equally important. 
• An unwillingness to just "say no" to distractions and other initiatives. 
• No concrete action plans. Just wishful thinking that change will somehow magically happen. 
• A failure to turn the desired change into a daily habit. 
• Not allowing others to hold us accountable. Keeping our change initiatives private to ourselves means we only have to answer to ourselves. And we are all too good at rationalizing our way out of making change. 
• Not putting our goals into a quantifiable format. 
• Not racking our progress or keeping journals to know what is working, and what is not.

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!

No 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.

Don’t 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 from successfully achieving your personal change initiatives.

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

Want to get your personal change goals back on track? The year is half over. Now is a perfect time to review your progress and re-ignite your personal change efforts. For help, see our earlier post on our launch of the Mid-Year Resolutions Initiative. You'll be glad you did.