What are your resolutions for 2025?
Research shows 88% of people give up on their resolutions within the first couple of weeks.
Are new year resolutions worth it? Some feel they’re worthless because statistically, they rarely work… others find them valuable… and many feel they “should” be making them.
Temporal landmarks are psychologically powerful, and while the start of a new year is pretty arbitrary, it gives us the beautiful opportunity to turn the page and start fresh. With optimism.
I love temporal landmarks, but I have a complicated relationship with goal setting.
Intent, Direction & Habits
For me, and many people I work with, the value is in the process of setting intent and direction… and building positive habits – more than the specific goals that might come from it.
I do find there’s a lot of value in creating a vision of the future and the change I want to see in the world – and in myself. Creating purpose and a direction to head with intent… with some goals and targets as a way to track progress.
Research shows new year resolutions – and goals in general – fail when they’re overly ambitious, don’t have a meaningful way to be tracked, and aren’t specific enough.
Overall, I agree with what James Clear says in Atomic Habits:
“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress”.
James Clear, Atomic Habits
We have a lot more success when we build the habits for momentum and embed them in our workflow… with a focus on who we want to become.
I’m also very mindful of the level of control and influence I have in being able to make progress to achieve goals.
Individually and collectively, we seem to like to think we’ve got more control than we actually do. It can be easy to feel torn between being ambitious and believing we just need to work hard to make things happen… and feeling helpless and that our effort doesn’t matter.
How do we approach this in a regenerative way that increases our wellbeing, helps us make progress, and doesn’t lead to burnout?
This post guides you through the system I’ve created over the years. It takes a strength-based approach focused on building happiness habits and creating your purpose. I shared this in my book Solve Problems That Matter… and several blog posts.
Checking In
Now’s a good time to reflect on where you’re at… and check in on where you’re going.
You might be doing some of these actions for the first time… or you might’ve done this before and it’s a good time to do a review…
Your Strengths & Assets
What are your strengths & assets? It’s easy to take what we have for granted, including what we’re really good at.
By focusing on our strengths and taking a strengths-based approach we increase our performance, productivity, and wellbeing. It helps create an environment that fosters a growth mindset, creative confidence, and innovation.
There’s a simple power in having your strengths and assets listed so you can refer to them easily. Using a strengths-based approach, it’s powerful to recognise our own strengths – our skills, knowledge, connections, resources, and potential – and build on them.
Take Action: What Are Your Strengths & Assets?
Your Happiness Habits
Our wellbeing and happiness are everything. It’s something we create – which I talked about in my Purpose & Happiness post a few years ago. It’s often the first thing I coach people on. The approach I take is to help you build habits that integrate wellbeing and happiness habits into your workflow.
I’m a big fan of Shawn Achor’s happiness research. One of his key findings is the belief most of us hold that we’ll be happy when we achieve a particular goal and experience success. It’s inherent in many of the things we’re taught, and we often over-index for goals.
“When we are happy – when our mindset and mood are positive – we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. Happiness is the center, and success revolves around it.”
Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage
His research shows we’re 30%+ more effective and productive when we’re in a positive state. Success follows happiness.
One of the things I love about Shawn Achor’s work is his focus on the practical things we can do to create positive mindset habits… to increase our happiness. Happiness is something we need to create… and keep creating. It’s a practice. A habit.
Take Action: Create Your Happiness Habits
Your Personal Wellbeing Plan
What helps keep you feeling happy and healthy? I spend a lot of time working with leaders and teams on designing, building, and launching regenerative business models – models that can deliver sustained value over the long term and be healthy.
Our personal sustainability and wellbeing are even more important. This is often the first thing I coach people on. The approach I take is to help you build habits that integrate wellbeing and happiness habits into your workflow.
We need to look after our health and wellbeing. This is key to our quality of life.
Our physical, mental, and emotional health are completely linked. The health of our mind affects our body, and the health of our body affects our mind. We need to look after both – like they’re one. Because they are. We also need to look after our financial health.
Take Action: Your Personal Wellbeing Plan
Your Purpose
What’s your purpose… your driving why?
Most of us are looking for happiness and meaning. Purpose is key to this. As Emily Esfahani Smith outlines in her great TED talk, she concluded from her positive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy research that there are four pillars to meaning: belonging, purpose, transcendence, and storytelling – especially the stories we tell ourselves.
It’s worth the time to reflect on what motivates us, what we get energy from, our driving why – but don’t expect it to be absolute and unchanging.
Take Action: Your Personal Why
With these foundational pieces reviewed… it’s time to think about making it happen. That’s where your long-term vision – the future you want to move toward – and objectives and key results (OKRs) come in to help you set and track measurable goals.
Let’s Collaborate
At Dynamic4, we specialise in leadership, design, and innovation with a focus on purpose and wellbeing. We do that by working alongside leaders and their teams to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter.
We love helping our clients design, build, and launch ideas that customers and teams love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet while increasing wellbeing. My book Solve Problems That Matter is a good way to get started.
What do we actually do? Key ways we help is through coaching and advice, workshops, innovation sprints, and designing and delivering leadership, design thinking & innovation programs. Our approach builds personal, team, and organisational capability to solve problems that matter with more:
- 🌿 Confidence to navigate complexity and solve problems that matter for your teams, customers, shareholders – and build momentum with more certainty and less risk while increasing your wellbeing
- ❤️ Clarity to empathically engage your stakeholders, make better decisions, and collaborate to create solutions that your teams and customers love, make money, and do great things for people and our planet
- 🎯 Purpose that drives progress on your goals and creates meaningful value that you’re proud of for all stakeholders – and build the relationships, workflows, rhythms, and habits for success
Ready to have fun collaborating to solve problems that matter?
