Why your resolutions failed and how to fix that.

If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026.

The New Year’s Resolution Check-In

It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound.

If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed?

If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought.

So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself.

The Limits of Free Will and Willpower

And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain.

That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multi