Goals Don’t Work
New Years resolutions have been failing since day one. How do we recommit our mindsets to good habits, in February and throughout this new year? It goes deeper than just the end result.
Goals v.s. Resolutions
There is a difference between a goal and a resolution.
A goal is a number to reach, a time to make, a blurb next to a checkbox on paper.
A resolution is resolve to do something that could change one’s whole life.
A goal is a statement of the end result.
A resolution is a list of activities to produce it.
Goals focus on the outcome, the outward expression.
Resolutions focus on the mind, the commitment and planning leading up to the final result.
While goals can be altered with trial and error, resolutions are unyielding, requiring undertakers to find creative ways to achieve.
Interchangeable though they may seem, there is a defining difference that separates the two from each other:
Goals are rescheduled and morphed, attempted and adjusted until the outcome achieved has vague resemblance to the original idea.
Resolutions bring a mounting sense of accomplishment with small habits — that is easily deflated within the first week of committing.
I wish that was an overdramatization but, unfortunately, statistics suggest otherwise.
According to Forbes’ recent study, most new year’s resolutions have already been abandoned by the second week — 80%, to be exact. Gyms are enjoying their free profits from unused subscriptions that won’t be officially canceled for about two more months. Ads for salads at fast food restaurants (it’s a thing) are becoming less popular - marketing companies slowly shift their focus back to the same greasy repertoire. Believe it or not, most have still not met their 50 pound weight loss goal by week three and have likewise deemed their resolution simply impossible. Even America’s leading resolution to improve mental health has been debunked, disintegrated within the first 10 minutes of social media activity.
More than Mindless Goal-setting
New Year’s resolutions fail every year. Due to their outrageously lofty nature, what can we really expect?
Most involve habits that we have not prepared our schedules for, resulting in inevitable shock that leads to their demise. Daily habits are demoted to a lower level on the priority list every day by the sheer nature of life.
A habit is interrupted or delayed - with lost momentum, starting up again suddenly doesn’t feel as natural. A few more delays, a day in which it is impossible to go to the gym or our morning routine is thrown out of wack and the goals have already been altered.
The resolution weakens.
Articles have rocked the internet since before 2023 to teach our fickle minds how to combat this regrettable problem. Their ideals sound good. But there is only so far we can get with putting ourselves in situations wherein it is easier to follow our new habits and achieve our goals.
We have never been the conductor of our lives — no matter when we plan to start, schemes to mold our routine only last so long. Plans are changed by things we can’t control and even more often by us. Just like that, we are confounded by the slow fade that ends our resolution. We want to achieve a goal but naturally do the opposite of what produces the end result. Can we not just do what we want?
According to the Word (also notably according to ancient philosophy and modern trends - it is a universal idea) it takes more than just goal setting and resolve to achieve an end result. There are two alternatives to mindless goal-setting. Force and desire.
Mental Tug-of-War
Force
Struggling to reach your goal weight?
Stop buying unhealthy food.
Force yourself into a program that can’t be canceled.
Create affirmations that make the torcher less burdensome and painstakingly make yourself do the opposite of your natural inclination.
This only truly works if you are not the only hand in it — an authority typically has to step in and scare you into submission daily. Find a consequence that scares you and use your fear to your advantage. It stinks, but it works.
In much more docile terms, that is the basics of what most self-help articles out there say. Any proficient in the nature of human behavior or anyone able to derive such ideas from pure common sense would believe this is true. Athletes grow up with periods of intense training governed by force — every elite entity likewise is trained in excruciating ways that yield insane results. The true strength of the human mind isn’t exhibited until we accept our weaknesses and fill them in with fear of an authority or outcome. There is only one other fix, and neither can exist without the other.
Desire
The counterpart of force, seemingly oppugnant in it's nature, is desire.
The longing to do something.
No one has to tell you, no one need force you.
People don’t typically set goals to lose muscle mass or become overweight, and no one in their right mind purses mental illness for the sake of being insane. Those outcomes are often considered “accidents,” and the steps leading up to them are merely flaws.
However, rather than dismissing these issues as mindless flaws, it is important to note that your predispositions can say a lot about you. What you naturally do is what you naturally desire to do — while force comes in when you would really rather do something else. Judging by the amount of overweight, mentally ill people in our country alone, desire is just as powerful if not more powerful than force. But is it always used for the bad results?
Desire can commonly be labeled bad for the sheer fact that what we naturally desire typically isn't good for us — however, while not always “natural,” it is possible to desire what is good.
It is possible to love the things that most people see as obligatory, to do things that are good for us not out of necessity but because we love doing them.
Often it begins with force and becomes a habit we crave — like an athlete who runs to stay fit but begins to love running for the sake of running. It can become natural to do the things we previously found tedious — and our view can change after months of repetition or in a moment.
Love Changes Us
If you have ever been in love with something (a person, a story, an activity) you know what I mean.
Maybe at the beginning there was a little bit of force, but in an instant when you realized how wonderful it was, you wanted to be different. You thought of ways to change your schedule to be around a person more or open more room to do a certain activity.
Slowly it influences what you buy, what you think about, how you talk. No one tells you to change your lifestyle. It happens out of your longing for whatever it is you are infatuated with.
Rough spots may occur — that is when force comes in and you work hard at what you love until you are intoxicated by loving it again.
In any relationship, then, or activity or lifestyle or goal, there must be force at times.
But force is nothing without desire.
You Are What You Want
What we do says a lot about what we desire. What we desire will be influenced by where we put ourselves and what we do. It is something I have been taught over and over again by various mentors when I go to them about achieving my goals.
My boss has thrown away designs I have sent to him and instantly demanded something different with more creativity. My mom has thrown away platefuls of a meal I made and suggested that next time I put my heart into it. My writing mentor encourages all of his students that we will never write something worth reading if we constantly compare ourselves to other people — ‘comparison is the author of failure.’
All saw through the force and wanted something that had more desire in it — there is a difference between doing something out of habit and truly wanting to do it.
Most eloquently, one of my favorite teachers phrased it this way lately:
“Goals don’t work. You have to want what you are doing. Otherwise, why even try?”
He preached a sermon to go along with this message (every second of which was beautiful) but the gist was this: we can’t expect to see results if we don’t really want to do what it takes to achieve them.
We have to love the process just as much as the outcome.
Desiring God
There are good examples of this kind of sacrificial desire throughout history but the greatest of them all is in God’s love for us.
Jesus loves hearing us just as much as He loved the end goal — reigning forever over His kingdom. He laughed and cried and healed us and continues to do so because he loves us as His own body.
In his sermon, the teacher reminded us of this — that God wants what is best for us and takes care of us when we seek Him. We can only bear fruit connected to His vine — we can only produce the kind of actions He truly finds admirable if we love Him and seek Him daily.
“Don’t cut yourself off from the Lord’s mercy and goodness and justice and expect to do what he wants you to do. He wants to sustain you and he wants to see you reach your goals. Do you have the kind of goals that please him or that don’t?”
This is what the pastor left us with. ‘If your prayers were answered and your goals fulfilled magically when you woke up in the morning, would anyone be benefited but you?’ What are you seeking after? Who are your goals for?
What our goals are — how reasonable they are — has a lot to do with whether or not we reach them.
But it also has a lot to do with whether or not we should.
