Have you👻 ghosted 👻your 2025 New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s how to let them go or get them back on track!

It’s almost the end of February 2025 and do you know where your New Year’s Resolutions are? If you have lost sight of them or ghosted them on purpose, don’t worry- you’re not alone. Only about a small percentage of resolutions are kept, according to recent studies. The good news? You don’t need a new year to start fresh. You just need the right mindset, habits, and approach to either let them go or get back on track. The trick is to figure out which one serves YOU best.

Let Go of Perfection: Let Them…and then Let Me

Mel Robbins is having a moment right now with her recent bestseller, Let Them. This book, which came out in December 2024, is a multi-faceted gem combining multiple theories and teachings about how to relate to others, and most importantly, yourself. While at first blush the title makes the reader think it is about relating to other people, in the end the book is about you and how you relate to the world. I won’t spoil all the details of the book, but it is a fascinating exploration into how the need for control and perfection can distort our best intentions and rob us of the life we are truly meant to live. Robbins teaches us that we can’t control everything—or everyone- and that is actually a very good thing. If you’ve been trying to stick to a rigid plan for your resolutions but life keeps getting in the way, give yourself permission to pivot. Borrowing from meditative practices, Stoicism, and more, the book delves deeply into how in the end, all you can really control is yourself and your reaction to what is happening around you. It is important to remember that resolutions should serve you- and most importantly- help you. They should not make you feel like you are failing or not enough. At this point in the year, it is a good time to reflect on the purpose of your resolutions and decide whether they are worth holding on for the long haul, or whether it is time to ditch them to the side because they don’t serve your true purpose. If you do decide that you want to continue with them, then keep reading about a few strategies that can help with getting back on track and most importantly, helping you be successful in completing them.

Figure out your “Why”

In the Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley review multiple decades of brain research and discuss how the unique patterns of our brain affect how we think, feel and live.  These unique patterns of brain activity end up determining how we react to different life events within six personality dimensions: resilience, outlook, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context and attention. Ultimately, it is these emotions that determine our choices and realities each day. By understanding what can affect or motivate these emotions within ourselves, we are then better prepared in understanding what might be needed to achieve a goal. It can be easy to say “I’m going to exercise more,” but without understanding why you want to do that or how it makes you feel if you do it or don’t do it, you may be ill-prepared when there is a setback. When setting a new goal or deciding on a resolution, it can help to determine your “Why” and then use that to focus your path forward.

Start Small: Habits are the Key 

Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit was a groundbreaking book that focused on how the brain creates habit loops that lead to both our greatest successes and worst challenges. In this book, he emphasizes the habit loop: cue, routine, reward. If you wish to identify what triggers your bad habits and replace them with better ones, take time to review your actions and how you feel when you engage in them. Another point to remember is that willpower is a cornerstone of habits. But it is important to remember that “…willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.” So, if you are trying to create a new habit to reach a goal or resolution, try to do it when you have the most energy. For example, if you are trying to exercise more- it may be best to try the early morning jog instead of the 6 PM cardio class at the gym. By the end of the day, your brain has had to make thousands of decisions and it is exhausted. It takes a lot of energy to get through the day, and that means your willpower is probably depleted as well. So, think about ways to set yourself up for success: if you reach for your phone instead of going for a walk, try leaving your phone in another room and keeping your sneakers by the door. Small changes like this can lead to significant gain when it comes to changing ingrained behaviors. It’s also important to note that once a habit is formed, it cannot be removed- but it can be replaced. Understanding that challenge can help you anticipate setbacks as you move forward. Similarly, James Clear’s bestseller Atomic Habits reminds us that success isn’t about massive changes, it’s about small, consistent improvements over time. For example, if you had set a goal to exercise daily but stopped after a few weeks, don’t give up entirely. Reframing what success is and is not will be the key here. Even if you can only fit in a 10-minute walk- that will work perfectly fine. It is those small incremental wins that help to build up your willpower and courage to continue.

Mindset: How you see the world determines your place in it

In Mindset, Carol Dweck explains that success comes from a growth mindset—the belief that abilities can be developed with effort. The counter to this is that if you have a fixed mindset, then you may never be able to change because that is what your belief system is telling you. If you’ve hit a setback, don’t see it as a failure. Instead, view it as part of the learning process. In his book, You Can’t Teach Vision, legal visionary John Morgan noted the many failures he went through to reach his ultimate successes. Making mistakes or failing is not what matters, it is getting back up and trying again that determines your success. Struggling with your resolutions or goals doesn’t mean you can’t do it; it just means you may need to adjust your strategy and most importantly, be patient with yourself as you move through the process.

The best time to start is Now

It is important to remember that when we set goals or resolutions, we are usually trying to change long term habits. Those habits were not created overnight and unfortunately, they won’t change that quickly either. Winston Churchill famously remarked “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” By framing the narrative around your new goals and resolutions as a path of progress that does not require perfection or happen overnight, it sets your mind with realistic expectations of what can and will happen. You may be able to exercise non-stop for the first 6 weeks and you feel like a huge success. But then work or life or an injury gets in the way. The key is to accept that those interruptions happen, but don’t let them determine your next steps. By returning to your Why, you can remind yourself of why you started this whole process to begin with. Start small, build better habits, adopt a growth mindset, let go of perfection and be kind to yourself. With these shifts, you’ll find that success isn’t about a single resolution or goal—it’s about creating a life you love, one habit at a time.