By February, around 80 percent of people have left behind their New Year’s resolutions. The reason? It’s hard to stick to a program structured on “fixing” yourself. If January was a wash for you, this month, let’s explore a new paradigm for change, one based on celebrating what you love about yourself.
Stanford psychology professor and author of The Willpower Instinct Kelly McGonigal told TedTalks that most resolutions go awry because we resolve to do something we think we should do, and in fact, we don’t actually want to follow through on the resolutions.
“I did this New Year’s resolution makeover once with this woman who had made the same resolution year after year to become a better cook, because she thought that’s what good moms and good wives did,” she explained. “She was a terrible cook, and she didn’t want to learn how to cook. That’s a mistake people make, is they think they’re just going to fundamentally change who they are with a resolution. ‘I’m going to become a morning person.’ ‘I’m going to become a health nut.’ ‘I’m going to become organized.’ The best resolutions are ones that strengthen something you already are, but you may not have been fully investing in.”
Below we’ve rounded up some tips to help you do just that.
First, take stock. Our subconscious, McGonigal warns, tends to drive our resolution-setting, using the exact wrong questions: “What should I be doing that I’m not?” or “What do I need to change about myself?” Avoid this trap – consider your life both as it is and as it could be.
“What is it that you want to offer the world?,” asks McGonigal. “Who do you want to be, what do you want more of in your life? And then [ask]: ‘How might I get there? What would create that as a consequence?’ When you start from that point of view…resolutions can be incredibly effective.”
To turn your attention to what matters most, Tim Ferriss, tech investor, author, and podcaster, offered a system via his blog that he uses called the Past Year Review. Ferriss recommends looking back at your calendar month-by-month and considering the people, commitments, and activities you engaged with; then, ask yourself: Which of these elicited strong positive or negative emotions for me at the time? Consider the patterns, what people, activities, and commitments most consistently brought positive (or negative) feelings? Use those findings to drive your future decision-making. Plan to spend more time doing what brought positivity and minimize what was negative. And show some urgency. “Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP, lest they get crowded out by the noise that will otherwise fill your days.” Ferriss wrote.
Don’t underestimate “friction.” Wendy Wood, a Psychologist at USC, refers to the “tiny barriers” you face daily to reach your goals as “friction” and she discussed its impact on habit-formation in a Q&A for Wharton professor Katy Milkman’s (excellent!) newsletter. Specifically, she wrote about our tendency to underestimate friction’s impact on our choices.
In 2020, Wood conducted a study on voting behaviors during the Presidential election. She asked respondents about their intention to vote and the factors they believed would promote or prevent them from doing so. Most responses alluded to the respondent’s beliefs, values, and candidate preferences. Very few mentioned the factors we would call “friction,” which includes things like childcare, lines at the polls, time away from work, parking, weather, etc. Post-election, researchers found that in actuality, values and friction were equally likely to have impacted the person’s voting decision.
Wood wrote, “All of this speaks to the fact that we tend to overvalue agency and underestimate the influence of difficulties in our environment, like barriers that can stop us from doing things.” The lesson here is to maintain your awareness of how friction can impede or, if proactively negated, aid you in following up on your resolution.
Consider the logistics around what you want to do for the rest of 2026 and create a plan to promote your own success. Start by noticing what gets in the way of your goals and then create a workaround: sleep in your workout clothes, purchase only the healthy snacks for home, or block out time on your calendar to pursue a hobby.
Activate your learning mode. Eduardo Briceño, Author of The Performance Paradox, gave a TedTalk titled “How to Get Better at the Things You Care About.” In it, he shared his research, which showed that the most effective people across disciplines share a commonality: they regularly alternate between performance and learning modes.
Performance mode is about execution. It is doing the thing and doing it as well as possible. Whatever it may be, playing tennis, giving a persuasive sales pitch, or performing a surgery. Learning mode, on the other hand, is about proactively dissecting your performance to identify areas for improvement. He cites Beyoncé as an example. She runs her concerts in performance mode, seeking the best experience for her audience. However, post-concert, she activates learning mode, watching tapes of the show and seeking ways to improve. She keeps notes for herself and shares feedback with the other performers and technicians.
Briceño notes that after an initial couple of years in a role, most a person’s performance plateaus because of their sole focus on performance mode. For improvement, we must seek out time to learn and develop. It sounds simple, but it requires a willingness to make room for mistakes and subsequent growth, the vulnerability to ask for feedback, and ultimately the ability to let go of perfection.
At the conclusion of his talk, he asked, “What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving, and becoming? What if we each always had something we were working to improve?”
Be kind to yourself. As you embark upon any change or resolution-strategy, it behooves you to do so with self-compassion and openness to missteps. Which, in addition to sounding really nice, is a strategy backed by science. Research shows that self-kindness is more effective than shame.
In The Willpower Instinct, McGonigal wrote, “If you think that the key to greater willpower is being harder on yourself, you are not alone. But you are wrong. Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control... In contrast, self-compassion—being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure—is associated with more motivation and better self-control. Consider, for example, a study at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, that tracked the procrastination of students over an entire semester. Lots of students put off studying for the first exam, but not every student made it a habit. Students who were harder on themselves for procrastinating on their first exam were more likely to procrastinate on later exams than students who forgave themselves. The harder they were on themselves about procrastinating the first time, the longer they procrastinated for the next exam! Forgiveness – not guilt – helped them get back on track.”
As you continue into 2026, do so focused on what you want more of in your life. Pursue those things with an eye for “friction,” a dedication to learning and improvement, and self-compassion for the inevitable moments when you miss the mark.
We’ll wrap things up with some inspiring words from Nike Running’s global head coach Chris Bennett: “Love is a much better fuel than hate.” We think that’s a perfect reason to use Valentine’s Day as the kick-off to your updated 2026 resolutions.
