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If your resolutions keep falling apart by February, it's not a willpower problem. It's just having a human brain. Let's talk about why resolutions don't stick and how you can set goals that you can actually live. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hey friends, it's Alysia and welcome back to Relish. So last week we talked about the importance of reflecting on your year, your lessons and growth and your becoming. And today we're looking ahead to the new year, but not with a new year, new me kind of
pressure. I want you to go into 2026 relishing your life. So, let's see if your goals are set up for that. I'll admit, there were many years when I was a total New Year's resolution fanatic. I love lists. I still love them. Uh the New Year new me energy. And honestly, year after year, February came with a nice dump of shame when I looked at what I said I'd do versus what actually happened. And over time through my own growth and seeing that and then helping other people, I have learned now to approach resolutions and goal setting very differently. So in this episode, we're going to unpack why most resolutions fall apart from a brain and nervous system perspective. We're going to shift from expectations to
aspirations so that your goals stop being a test for your worth. We're going to look at the psychology of goals and habits, including why tiny consistent steps are going to beat out the dramatic ones. We're going to explore what I have called my human method for setting goals that actually respect your energy and your reality. And I'm going to guide you through a short embodied practice to feel into an aspiration for 2026 and name a small next step that you can take. I'll also share a little bit about how I learned this the hard way through my own patterns and through working with clients. And I've created a free workbook to walk you through that human process after you listen. Before we dive
in, I have a kind request. If you've been enjoying the show, please leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Please download, please follow. That all is going to help us grow more than anything. And if this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who's setting intentions for the new year. All right, let's get into it. Why do most resolutions fail? It is not because you're undisiplined. It's because you're human. Most people set resolutions in a kind of uh future fantasy mode. They have high motivation, high emotion, a lot of hope, and zero attunement to reality and how behavior change actually works. It's really not personal. It's neuroscience. So, let's
talk about three big reasons why resolutions fall apart. The first is that motivation is temporary. Motivation is not a personality trait. It's a state. Dopamine spikes during beginnings like January 1st because the brain interprets new beginnings as psychological fresh starts. And there's research showing that these temporal landmarks can give us a real boost of motivation. I'll link that research in the show notes. This is one reason I actually like using the new year to create some goals or what I'm going to call aspirations today. And I know that critics of New Year's resolutions will say, you know, January 1 is no different than any other day. And yes, that's technically true. But there's nothing
wrong with wanting to capitalize on the fresh start effect. Okay. The problem is motivation doesn't last, it drops. And that's why you feel unstoppable at the beginning on the 1st and then you know by the 14th you're thinking who was that person? What was I thinking? Or maybe you know this has happened to me. Maybe you don't even want to remember that the resolution was there or that you made it because you don't want to have to confront the shame that comes with feeling like you failed. But truly, nothing has gone wrong here. your brain is simply returning to baseline after that motivation spike fades. The second reason resolutions fall apart is habits [snorts] are what run the show, not our
intentions. Research shows that about 43% of our daily actions are habitual. Which means, you know, if you think about it, almost half your life is on autopilot. Habits live in deeper parts of the brain like the basil ganglia where more unconscious processes are happening. It's not in the prefrontal cortex where conscious decisions are made. And under stress, humans default to habit mode. We're not going to default to our best self mode, not New Year's resolutions mode. So yes, you can set a resolution from your highest most inspired energy, but your real life or I guess at least my real life is not always led by that
inspired self. More of my days are lived by the version of me who's tired and stressed and juggling a million things and overwhelmed and, you know, just trying to get through the day. So that version of me or you will always fall back into what's familiar because the brain is trying to save energy. Routine habits are known and the brain has to expend less energy with what's known than what's unknown. So it's not because you're weak, it's because your brain is being efficient. And the third reason that New Year's resolutions tend to not work is that all orno goals activate your threat system. We have talked about this before. Black and white thinking and how limiting it can be. Big dramatic
goals like I am going to meditate every single day or I'm going to work out at 500 a.m. every morning. Yeah, it sounds inspiring until you miss a day. And then that perfectionist protector pipes in. You know, forget it. I blew it. Why even try? It's that [__] it mentality. So for years I was absolutely trapped by this all orno thinking and goal setting. And then when I messed up, when I missed a day, my pattern was to do nothing. sometimes for weeks or months waiting for the perfect time to begin again when you know nothing external was going to get in the way which of course never happens. So this is what I call fixed mode. I've done an episode on it but this is the rigid pressured urgent
unrealistic mode. It's reactive and not responsive. Big goals don't fail because they're too hard. They fail because your nervous system cannot hold them. Your body cannot sustain pressurebased change. It can only sustain present change which has to happen in these small grounded doable steps. Now before we talk about creating goals that actually stick, we need to shift the way we relate to goals in the first place. Recently I did an episode on expectations and talked about how expectations set us up for suffering. We're going to bring that wisdom into your relationship with goals. Expectation is rigid. Expectation says, "I will be enough when I achieve this.
This has to go exactly as planned, exactly as I expect, and if it doesn't, if I mess up at all, then I've failed." Expectation puts pressure on the future once I get there. And then and that pressure creates a contraction in the body. This tightness, this urgency, this gripping expectation turns goals into a test of your worthiness. Now, aspiration, however, is open. Aspiration says, "This is the direction that I'm moving toward. This really matters to me. I'm becoming more of myself." So, aspiration is rooted in your values and your intention.
Aspiration is connected to meaning uh and it feels expansive in the body, roomy and honest and aligned. So expectation tends to create some kind of contraction or collapse and aspiration creates movement and openness. Now which of those nervous systems sounds better equipped to navigate long-term change? Right? Research shows humans can absolutely grind out some short-term change from pressure and shame. But lasting change, no, that comes from openness, resilience, curiosity, possibility, beginning again. So, let's talk about what research actually says about goals that last. Goals are a form of mental time travel.
Neuroscience shows that the same brain networks you use to imagine the future are also the ones you use to remember the past. Now this matters because you are not creating goals out of thin air. You are using your memories and your experiences, your beliefs, your patterns even to build the picture of who you want to become. This is why reflection of the past has to come before planning. Last week we talked about reflecting on your past year and acknowledging the shifts you made and also the ones that you didn't. Uh that's not something that's just like nice to have. It's nice to reflect. This is essential to your
goal setting because your past informs your future not to limit you but to ground you. Number two, outcome goals don't work. Process goals work. So let me explain this clearly. If I say, "I'm going to meditate for an hour every day." When you've barely meditated before, that's not a goal. It's like a fantasy. A process goal might sound like, "I'll meditate for 2 minutes after I make my coffee or I'll add on 2 minutes every week or something like that." That's called implementation intention. You're linking a new behavior to a cue that already exists in your day. Research shows these um they're called if then plans are more effective because your brain no longer has to rely on motivation. It relies on structure.
Same goes with visualization. There's a lot of talk about the power of visualization. I am going to do an episode on it soon, but for now if you only visualize the outcome, which is what a lot of people are talking about, the brain can feel like it's already there and then your drive can drop. But if you visualize the steps of the process, the brain prepares to take action. So process over outcome every time. The third is tiny behaviors create massive compounding results. This is my favorite part both personally and in working with clients. So, let's say that your goal is to work out every day for an hour and you start January 1st and you've got sheer willpower sort of guiding you and you get through, I don't
know, five days in a row and then life happens. You're tired. Something comes up. You miss a day and then that shame story kicks in and you stop and you don't do it for the rest of the month. All right? So, you did five workouts in a month and it's all crammed into a week. [snorts] Now, let's say during those workouts, you do, I don't know, three sets of 10 push-ups or squats or whatever exercises are part of your routine. That's 150 reps over the course of those five workouts. Now, imagine instead you said, "I'm going to aim for 10 push-ups or 10 squats per day." Per day. And then you let yourself be human. Maybe you only even do it half the time. That is still 150 push-ups or squats in
a month and they're spread out over the course of the month instead of one intense burst. Now, not only is being imperfect with the smaller goal going to give you the same amount of reps, but it's over a more extended period of time, meaning your body is getting treated with more respect more regularly instead of being overused for a week and then ignored. You know, I know that was sort of detailed, but the math to me is just wild because of that compounded effect. Small repeated actions over time destroy the all or nothing approach when you zoom out. The big goals, they feel inspiring, but the small goals are what create the results. The fourth thing is that streaks mean nothing. We've talked
about this before. Habit research shows the brain, it doesn't encode streaks. It does not care if you miss a day. What the brain encodes is repetition. Streaks are something the mind gets attached to. The mind says, "Oh, I had a 14-day streak and now I'm ruined. I'm a failure." And that shame is what actually shuts down the behavior change, not the missed day. The nervous system can totally recover. It recovers just fine from a missed day, but it struggles to recover from shame. I've got a personal example for this. About 10 years ago when I first started meditating, I did not set some big goal like I'm going to meditate 30 minutes
every day for the next year. I simply decided I'm going to aim for 5 minutes a day. That's it. And I wasn't meditating with a goal of fixing anything. I wasn't attached to lowering anxiety. I wasn't attached to any particular outcome. I was genuinely curious about the process. And I did not tell myself it had to be for a full year. I wasn't tracking any streaks. I just showed up most days for five minutes almost every day. I did miss some. And what happened is I did [clears throat] that consistently and for about eight or nine months without any pressure to do more. It became a habit. It was just something that I did. And by then the benefits were obvious to me. I felt different. And because the
habit was in place, it was so much easier to expand to 10, 15, 20 minutes and beyond. Now looking back that fiveinut choice changed my whole life. I didn't you know try harder. I made the bar very realistic and I stayed curious and now I do meditate almost every single day for extended periods. And if I go through some period like the holidays or traveling where I can't be in my normal routine, it's really easy for me to pick it back up. And I believe it's because that foundation when I built the habit, I built it slow and steady and with patience. And this is what I see with the clients that I work with. The people who give themselves permission to start small and stay with
it. Those are the ones who really live the change. Now, we do need systems to help make change. But I believe the secret to all of this is that these systems have to give us permission to be imperfect. goals often don't stick because people are designing systems for their best self. You know, the perfectly rested, never overwhelmed, no kids screaming, no deadlines, no financial stress self. But your real self, the one who gets tired and overwhelmed and has stressful days and has to travel responsibilities, has a nervous system, that self has limits. Behavior change only works when the system respects your humanity.
You have to meet yourself where you actually are. We have to accept ourselves as we are before we can support some kind of change. So what does this look like in practice? The first thing is to create a goal that almost feels too small to fail. So, not an hour of meditation, not even 20 minutes. Maybe you try 2 minutes. Seriously, this is not lowering the bar. It's making the goal accessible and doable and sustainable. 2 minutes removes the shame trap. And once you're there, you often will do more. You know, we see we know this from experience. You validate yourself. I did it. And that feeling of success motivates you to come back even though more is not required.
You feel good about it. An important part of this too small to fail goal. You have to stop and acknowledge that you did it. Some kind of self- appreciation practice where at the end of the day you celebrate yourself and you say, "I did it. You know, I meditated for two minutes and I kept the promise to myself." Stopping to reflect shows your brain you can rely on yourself and make change. The next thing is to build for low bandwidth days. Yeah, anyone can meditate for 20 minutes when they slept great and ate well and you know no one needs anything from them. But who carries your habit on the days you're exhausted and anxious when you're grieving? When your schedule explodes
and life is lifing, that version of you needs a goal they can actually hold. So ask yourself, what would be doable on my worst day, my lowest energy day? This is the real goal, not the glamorous Instagram version, the human version. This is one of the biggest shifts I help my clients make. Designing for the person they actually are right now, not the person that they think that they should be or want to be. And that leads to the third thing, allowing intentional space for missing days. So, we're not going for streaks. Build a permission structure. That could sound like, I'm going to aim for three days a week. I want to show up more days than not. I'm going to give myself three misses per
week. But choose something that feels kind and generous and gentle. And then your nervous system can relax. And relaxation is going to create sustainability. Whenever clients tell me what they want to aim for, I ask what that is. And then I encourage them to shoot for half of that. And from working with people, this is my kind of anecdotal evidence. When people aim for that half, they feel proud of succeeding. And that pride motivates them to continue. They build up capacity gradually without blowing out their system. Their system can adapt and this is how you break that cycle of I blew it so quit. The fourth thing is to treat any change like a trial, not a lifelong contract. This is something I do with every change I want to make and people I
work with. Saying I have to do this forever now is very daunting. It puts a lot of pressure on yourself. It's never ending. And so instead, we treat it like an experiment. So you might say, "For the next week or 10 days, I'm going to try this behavior." Put a start and an end date on your calendar. Make it intentional. And when that end date comes, actually pause and reflect. What worked? What didn't work? You know, on the days that I did it, what helped? On the days that I didn't do it, what got in the way? This keeps you curious instead of judgmental so that you can adapt. So for example, maybe you want to work out in the mornings and you try for a week to do it. And you look back, you
wanted to do it every day, but you only did it two days and you notice that they were the days you didn't have calls until 10:00 a.m. On the days that you had calls at 8:00 a.m., that workout did not happen. So instead of I failed, you can go, "Oh, okay. Maybe the morning workouts don't fit on the early call days. What are my other options? Maybe you do two mornings in one afternoon. Maybe you uh choose weekend mornings instead. Instead of rigidity, do you see how this approach of having a trial and experiment? It allows you to be more open to possibility. It keeps you in that fluid adaptive mode instead of fixed mode. And so what you're learning in that process is not I'm bad at this. You're learning how you
actually function to meet yourself where you're at. The fifth thing is you need a system that welcomes being human. And this is where I'm going to introduce my human method. It's a simple approach for setting goals in 2026. One that honors the truth of being human. So I want to be clear. I made this up and I'm calling it the human method because goals only work when your system respects your humanity, your energy, your needs, your limits, your nervous system. So human stands for Honor, U understand, Minimize, A allow, Nourish. So we're going to walk through each step briefly. H is honor. Honor your why. Honor the deeper aspiration underneath that surface level goal. So not, you know, I want to run every day. Why do
you want to run every day? I want to feel strong in my body. I want to feel more energy. I want to feel alive. I want to be able to play with my kids. Honor the intention before the behavior. When you start with your why, the reason that you care, then your goal becomes more rooted in meaning instead of pressure. This is going to support the long-term motivation. You is understand. Understand your reality. Not a fantasy version of you. The real version of you, your bandwidth, your responsibilities, your energy patterns, your nervous system and environment, and your actual life. Most goals fail
because they were not designed for the person that you actually are. Understanding means telling the truth. This is what keeps your goal from turning into self-abandonment. M is minimize. Minimize the size of the goal. Shrink it. It might become almost embarrassingly small. It's not lowering your standards. It's raising your sustainability because your nervous system does not care how dramatic your goal sounds. It cares whether it feels doable. So, cut it in half. Then maybe even cut it in half again. So, ask, "Would this still be doable on my worst day?" If the answer is no, for some goals that might still be too big. The
small goals compound. Dramatic goals collapse. A stands for allow. Allow imperfection. Allow missed days. Allow inconsistency. Allow being human. Remove streaks from your vocabulary. Missing a day is irrelevant. What matters is that you begin again. Your system has to allow flexibility. You are not a machine. You are a person. And when you allow for imperfection, you remove the thing that derails people, which is the I blew it so quit narrative. Nourish. Nourish the repetition, the tiny consistent returns. Nourish the version of you who's trying. Nourish the body that's learning. Nourish the new identity that's forming. Nourish by appreciating the efforts and the moments
that you have shown up. Nourish does not mean force. It means support, encouragement. It means returning again and again without judgment. This is how habits form and self-rust builds. So honor, understand, minimize, allow, nourish. This is human. The goal is not to become better. The goal is to become more yourself. and to build a system that can actually hold that truth. So let's take a moment together to explore this in an embodied way for yourself. So this method is broken down in the workbook, but I want to take a moment together here to explore this in an embodied way for yourself. So if it's available to you, find a comfortable position. This will be brief. You could close your eyes if you want, but just
take a slow, gentle breath and bring one 2026 goal or a resolution that you have to mind. It could be moving your body, being kinder to yourself, saving money, creating something, resting more, something deeper. Maybe it's something you want to achieve, something you want to do. And whatever it is, just notice your body's response. Does it feel tight, urgent, pressured, like there's a test you need to pass? If so, that might be more rooted in expectation or fixed mode. That could be your protector speaking. So take another breath and see if you can drop into the aspiration. What is it that I really want underneath this?
What's the real intention? Is it peace? Wanting confidence or your health? Is it aliveness or trust? Let your body tell you. And notice if you feel any softening or more open, a little more spaciousness or less gripping. This is the energy of aspiration as opposed to expectation. It's a more fluid mode. This is where meaningful change begins. So from this open spaciousness as you're connected to your intention and your aspiration just ask yourself what is the smallest step I can respond with today to move toward this goal. Not tomorrow, not waiting until January 1st. Today and let whatever arises be enough.
Okay. So, you can open your eyes if you close them. I know that was brief, but I want you to just recognize if you noticed any difference or shift in your body between the two. That energy is the energy driving you. If you found this helpful, I've got a workbook to guide you through this process, the human goal setting guide, an aspirationbased workbook for 2026. And inside of it, you will name your goal. That's the surface level thing that you think you want to do. You'll identify the expectations hiding inside of it. The I shoulds or I have to or the stories of like once I do this then I'll be that. From there, the workbook will help you reframe those expectations into aspirations. The deeper values and
feelings and intentions that actually matter to you. And once you've surfaced those expectations and clarified the aspiration, you'll move through the human method step by step. So, you'll honor uh the why, why this truly matters to you. You'll understand reflecting on your real bandwidth, your current season of life, what has and hasn't worked before. You'll shrink your goal down to something that's really realistic even on your lowest energy day. You'll design a permission structure, how imperfection can be intentionally built into your plan. and you'll craft a gentle, nourishing return plan for how you'll support yourself when you fall off and return with kindness instead of shame.
And then at the end, there's a place to name some small aligned steps that you can take even before January 1 comes around and then you'll do it. And there will also be a place to name the cues that can help keep you accountable. So, think of this as building a system that supports you when you are most human, not just the most motivated. The link is in the show notes if you want to check it out. It's completely free. But you don't have to wait for a new year to become yourself. If you choose to use this fresh start energy like I do, then that's totally fine. But use it wisely, not from perfection or pressure or fantasy, but from embodiment and alignment and aspiration. from a place
of really trusting yourself. You don't need a new you. You need to meet you as you are here now in the present moment. So, if this episode resonated, please follow, download, help us out with a fivestar rating and review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Share this with a friend who loves setting goals. And don't forget to download the workbook. And you can also call in on the Relish hotline to share an aspiration that you're holding for 2026. I would love to hear it. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you're having a happy holiday season and I'll see you next week.
