“New year, new you.” If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times.

I know I’ve personally had the experience of getting excited, setting a ton of awesome New Year’s resolutions and then slowly dropping the ball on each one as the year went on.

Honestly - most of them didn’t even make it past January. Then, the next year… rinse and repeat.

That was before I completely transformed the way I think about goal setting and creating results. I’ve seen the other side and I know that you can see the same change for yourself.

It starts with throwing out all the junk that people have told you about setting goals and creating results – and all the phony BS out there about New Year’s resolutions.

I’ve spoken to dozens of experts this year – and one of the common threads they’ve shared is that it’s really hard to make big changes in your life…IF you go about it the wrong way!

That’s why so many people struggle with their big goals and dreams – because they are fighting against human nature and the way your brain works.

So why fight upstream? Why try and fight an uphill battle against human nature?

There is an easier way to create epic breakthroughs and transformations in your life. One that is aligned with brain science and makes it so that big changes happen naturally and effortlessly instead of through toil, blood, sweat, and tears.

Before we dig into the one big shift you can make that will allow you to create big results in your life in 2019, let’s look at the two big reasons WHY goals and New Year’s resolutions are doomed to fail in the first place.

The Major Social Problem of Our Time

There are two big reasons why New Year’s resolutions typically fail.

The first is because our goals often exist in a total accountability vacuum.

As business psychology expert and renegade therapist Peter Shallard shared with me in a recent interview: “The root cause of the major social pathology of our time is that most people have absolutely zero accountability in their lives.”

The single biggest social problem of our time is that people no longer have any kind of accountability in their lives.

Shallard goes on to say “the human brain did not evolve to optimally perform in that vacuum of social accountability.”

When you set a goal without the right accountability structure you’re setting yourself up for failure. You’re fighting against brain science. 

We used to live in tribal and hunter gatherer societies with constant social feedback, reinforcement, and accountability for what we did. If you didn’t live up to your stated commitments, you had to face your failure in front of all your friends and loved ones!

Or, in some cases you were kicked out of the tribe altogether. Wouldn’t these consequences get your butt in gear?

Sadly, that accountability simply doesn’t exist in today’s world.

Here’s a 5 second test you can use to get a sense of how much accountability you have in your life right now.

Shallard recommends asking yourself a simple question “Does anyone on earth really know if you spent the last week in the zone absolutely crushing it, or if you were just clocking in and out without accomplishing anything?”

He and his team conducted a research poll on a large sample of highly successful entrepreneurs. The results were shocking.

The results revealed that even people with self-described great friends, great marriages, and amazing social networks answered no. They simply had NO accountability in their lives.

Shallard says the increasingly digital, private, on-screen nature of our lives means “no one knows whether or not you crushed it last week, or whether or not you just clocked in and out and wasted time.”

What does that mean for you?

For starters – it explains why it’s so darn hard to keep those New Year’s resolutions!

Without the right kind of accountability you are fighting thousands of years of human evolution and making it much, much harder to achieve your goals.

You were set up to fail and you didn’t even know it.

The good news is – there are several evidence-based strategies for creating epic levels of accountability in your life. I will share them all with you in an upcoming post of this series – Elevate 2019: Effortlessly Achieve Your Goals Without Stress & Overwhelm.

The Other BIG Reason That New Year's Resolutions Fail

There’s another MAJOR reason that your New Year’s resolutions typically fail.

This reason is just as, if not MORE important than accountability. (Hint: It’s something you probably know is true for you and have been thinking about it in the back of your mind for a while..)

Do you think you know what it is? Let’s hear it! Email me at matt@successpodcast.com and let’s start the conversation!

Luckily, either way I will tell you all about in our next post in the Elevate 2019: Effortlessly Achieve Your Goals Without Stress & Overwhelm series next week.

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Talk to you soon.