Why so many New Year’s resolutions fail, and how to fix it

There is a common culprit behind many broken New Year’s resolutions and other unrealized goals, and it can influence your thoughts and actions without your awareness, says Dr. Safia Debar, a general practitioner and resiliency expert at Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London.

If you are having difficulty achieving goals to exercise more, eat nutritious meals and take other steps toward a healthier lifestyle, it may be worth considering whether a self-limiting belief is to blame, Debar says.

A self-limiting belief is a thought or belief that you see as the truth about yourself or the world around you and that restricts you from your full potential, she explains.

“It’s fundamentally a truth you hold about yourself that’s not serving you,” Debar says. “Some self-limiting beliefs can be that you can’t lose weight, that you have a sweet tooth. Well, really no one has a sweet tooth. Other self-limiting beliefs can be that you’re lazy, you can’t exercise, you hate the gym. Well, you can leave the gym to exercise.”

Changing our beliefs

The first step toward eliminating a self-limiting belief is becoming aware of it, Debar says. That may require reflection, because self-limiting beliefs tend to be present without your conscious knowledge, and your mind is remarkably good at seeking, and sometimes even creating, evidence to confirm them, she adds.

“For example, if somebody feels that they want to eat healthier or incorporate more movement into their day, but then, underlying this, they feel that they’re not good enough or they’re not worthy of self-care or they’re not worthy of prioritizing their health, and that other people’s needs are more important, then they will sabotage the positive lifestyle changes that would serve them,” Debar says. “They will sabotage those behaviors because it makes sense: ‘Why would I eat well if I’m not worth it? Why would I set a boundary or put myself first if I’m not worth it?’ ”

Because underlying beliefs may heavily influence behavioral changes that you want to make, the ideal is to know what those beliefs are and to question whether they are serving you or not, Debar says. Writing thoughts in a journal or talking it through with a trusted person can help, she suggests.

“Whenever anything happens, a dynamic, anything that has an emotional load, it’s always a really good opportunity to ask and to journal: What is the story you are telling yourself? What do you believe about yourself?” she says. “I call this a thought dump, or a stream of consciousness.

“When something happens, just write what’s in your head. Then when you reread it, if there are known thought distortions, that will tell you whether this is a limiting belief. Then you start to get to know your internal narrative.”

For example, questioning a belief that you can’t lose weight could include considering:

■ Where did I learn that I can’t lose weight?

■ Where did I see that?

■ Am I fully informed about the actual process of losing weight?

■ What emotion am I trying to feel, or what emotion am I trying to avoid?

Small, consistent steps

Often, people find that their self-limiting beliefs didn’t originate with themselves at all, but instead came from teachers, caregivers, family members, society, culture or other sources, Debar says.

Then, identify small steps that you can take to achieve your goal, she recommends.

“The brain doesn’t like change. So it’s about taking small, regular, consistent actions and being aware of your internal dialogue so that you expect resistance but remember why you want to make the change, and question the beliefs that are blocking you,” Debar says.

“We start off saying we’re going to exercise every day, cut our alcohol, wake up at 5 a.m., meditate for 45 minutes, be the nicest person ever, and then two weeks later, we realize all of these emotions are coming up and all of this resistance is coming up,” she explains. “A better approach would be to ask what the most important goal is and then to approach it in tiny steps. If you want to exercise, for example, then start with a few minutes a day.

“Five minutes a day will mean that you have set up a habit, so that will then foster the belief that you follow through: You have kept your promise, you are consistent.”

Debar recommends breaking down a range of healthy lifestyle changes by starting with the easiest thing you can do. If your goal is to eat healthier meals, start by trying to eat an extra portion of fruit or vegetables each day, and when you’ve done that for a few weeks, you can then think of yourself as a person who eats fruits and vegetables, who enjoys fruits and vegetables.

“It’s a very different approach from the person who starts trying to do everything and then two weeks later is feeling very demoralized and, paradoxically, will just go deeper into the things that they don’t want to do and make them feel bad about themselves,” Debar says.

A good thing about the new year is that it gives people momentum and a little rise in willpower, she says.

“But we can’t rely on willpower to change behavior,” Debar adds. “It has to start with a tiny, incremental, consistent change.”