Today is January 2nd which means the holidays for most have officially come to a close. As one season closes another begins which is now the season of New Year’s resolutions. The beginning of a new year offers a moment of transition that psychologically allows us to begin with a blank slate. A fresh start is born giving us a mental reboot and a willingness to dig around in the toy box of our potential.
Bright eyed and filled with hope we plunge ourselves into our new exercise routines, different relationships with alcohol, and eating habits seeking to shed the baggage that is preventing the lives we truly want. Gyms are full. Liquor stores are dormant. Junk food abandoned. Inspiration is at an all-time high. Bad habits were told to sit and stay in 2025. This time is going to be different. It’s going to work. And statistically it does… for about two weeks. That is until we encounter what is now known as Quitters Day.
Quitters Day is the 2nd Friday of January which this year is January 9th one week from today. The name was popularized by the fitness app Strava, which analyzed user data and noticed a significant drop in activity levels around this time. Research suggests that by this point, many individuals (sometimes up to 80% in some reports) have abandoned their resolutions due to factors like unrealistic goals, lack of planning, or not seeing immediate results.
Said another way the resoluteness of our resolutions clash with reality. That collision produces a chemical response in us known as frustration and we quit. Our old ways are invited back into our lives like an ex partner that feels familiar and yet wrong on multiple levels. With a strong dose of rationalization we sink back into our old routines and abandon our new plans for health and change.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. New Year’s resolutions can work.
We simply need a better approach.
In more than ten years of coaching, I have seen a recurring pattern when adults pursue change. They almost always default to one of two approaches: extreme behavior or gimmicks. Said another way they seek cliffs and curbs instead of a curve.
Extreme behavior is like attempting to climb a 90 degree cliff. It’s so hard and the margin for error is razor thin. When you inevitably slip and fall you end up at the bottom on your back bruised physically and emotionally. The old story of how you never follow through finds its voice leading to feeling hopeless causing you to walk away from the challenge defeated. But you aren’t defeated. You just started from a place that was virtually impossible. The bar was too high. Your approach was too extreme.
Gimmicks are the curbs. The curbs are the magic pills, hacks, and shortcuts we use to make change flat and easy. They falsely advertise to the most insecure parts of us promising results we know deep down aren’t real. But whatever we use to cheat the process will eventually cheat on us. This is playing out right now at epic proportions with weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Mark my words just like the diet pills of late 80’s early 90’s that damaged the health of millions of Americans history will repeat itself. Whatever you seek to cheat with will cheat on you. The work is the hack. It is the shortcut. Magic pills don’t exist.
To create real and lasting change we must seek a curve. Curves are the balancing act between cliffs and curbs. Imagine them to be like a hike that challenges us just enough that we are growing but not so much we can’t complete them. Finding curves takes art, science, evaluation and understanding.
The Goldilocks Effect is my go to when helping someone find their curve.
If you’ve ever read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears you know that Goldilocks finds herself inside the cottage of the Three Bears with three different bowls of porridge in front of her. Hungry she picks up the spoon of the first bowl puts it to her tongue to find it’s too hot. The second was too cold. The third and final bowl? Just right.
This is where we miss the mark. Because of our tendency to approach change using extreme behavior or gimmicks we end up with resolutions that are too hot or too cold. Extreme behavior and gimmicks are the fertilizers of failure because they create unrealistic expectations of time, energy, and effort. The results we create are subpar and the cycle repeats. Again and again and again. To create lasting change we’ve got to find the approach that is “just right”.
(See the graph below as a visual for what I am describing here)
So how do we use the Goldilocks Effect to break the cycle?
First get clarity on which of the two approaches you typically use when seeking to create change.
Are you a cliff or a curb person? Be honest and keep the judgment out of the conversation. One thing I constantly remind myself and my clients of is “No one including you has ever benefited from your judgement of them.”
If you are a cliff person you take on too much and must learn to consolidate your changes down so they are more manageable. If you are a curber then you’ve got to make peace with the fact that this change is going to remove you from your comfort zone.
Second, understand why this approach has failed you in the past. Why hasn’t it worked? What about that approach has kept you from getting what you wanted?
Third, get clear on why this change is important to you and those around you. Results come from reasons. The better the reasons the better the results.
Fourth, narrow your focus to one change that you can and will follow through on using the question below.
What is the single “just right” action I will 1000% commit to no matter what for the next 90 days?
Notice the word single. One. Not three, not five, not ten. One.
This is important because we are seeking to establish a curve that you can and will hike for a minimum of 90 days. My encouragement to you is to really think this through and start small. Probably smaller than you want.
Rather than “going to the gym five days a week” you might choose “walk 10,000 steps five days a week.” Rather than “read 20 pages a day” you might choose “read five pages a day.” Rather than “follow this super strict diet” you might choose “log everything I eat into My Fitness Pal.”
I know it is difficult to trust in a slower process but compound interest is always at play and just like the story of the tortoise and the hare the tortoise always wins. Slow and steady will always beat fast and inconsistent.
Don’t allow the simplicity of this to fool you. I’ve seen this work more times than I can count. One client in particular has now lost over 70 pounds and has kept the weight off for three years using one of the small changes mentioned above. Logging everything he ate and drank into My Fitness Pal. That was it. Just one small action that he 1000% committed to and it literally changed everything.
I’m not one of those people who say New Year’s resolutions don’t work. They do work but we have to approach them differently. With patience. With simplicity. And with the willingness to start smaller at a lower bar. It seems counterintuitive and paradoxical but it absolutely works.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for being a recipient of this newsletter. Now go forth and make 2026 the year you finally broke through.
live freed,
Jordan
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