Have Your New Year’s Resolutions Already Failed? Here’s Why

Up to 80 per cent of new year’s resolutions fail by the end of January.

It can then lead to years-long cycles of making and breaking the same ol’ resolutions year after year.

So what is our obsession with starting fresh in the new year?

Listen to the episode of The Briefing here:

Dr Gordon Spence from the University of Sydney sits down with Sacha Barber Gatt to reveal what tools you can use to help change your habits and why so many people become unstuck.

Dr Spence said while setting resolutions may not be the most effective tool to crate new habits, it isn’t an “unhealthy” method.

“I don’t see it as being unhealthy, but obviously it can be more or less effective, but there’s nothing unhealthy about it,” he said.

“Human beings are goal directed beings and so we’re always thinking and try to move towards it, move into the future in ways that can be most effective, most satisfying.

“I think people can become despondent about it can be discouraged around their attempts to try and achieve some of these things, and as I say, I think that a big part of that is really related to the action planning people put in.”

To hear more about why we’re inclined to set resolutions, and why in most cases, we can’t get them to last over a month, listen to the episode of The Briefing now.