34 Why Most Goals Fail by February

In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, Becky Hamm breaks down why goals fail for so many successful women, even when the goal matters and the intention runs deep. You’ll hear the brain-based mechanics behind January momentum, February drift, and the very specific way your brain starts tracking cost, effort, and follow-through.

Becky walks through the three drivers that fuel early goal energy, then explains what happens when novelty fades, feedback slows, and your brain shifts into efficiency mode. You’ll leave with a clear map of the mechanisms underneath the pattern, plus a preview of next week’s companion episode on implementation.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
·       Why early goal momentum feels so easy in your brain
·       How dopamine and progress cues shape follow-through
·       Why executive function fatigue shows up inside goal implementation
·       How your brain starts economizing under real-world leadership load
·       Why outcome focus weakens day-to-day engagement
·       How patterns and small wins train your brain to stay in motion 

#podcastforwomen #womenwholead #goalsfail #goalsetting #goalachievement #womeninleadership #leadershipdevelopment #womenleaders #sustainablesuccess #joyfullyunstoppable #womenleadwell
 

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Transcript

0:46

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who were ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, leadership coach, speaker and founder of Women Lead Well. Each week we'll explore what it means to lead joyfully, sustainably, and authentically, even in a world that tells you to hustle harder, improve your worth, you carry a lot. Let's help it feel lighter. Okay, my friends, happy New Year. I hope your 2026 is off to a great start. Kids are back at school today. We had a fantastic holiday season. Our biggest accomplishment might be that none of the kid, that nobody got sick, over the holidays and so. We made it through an early morning wake up to get the kids to school. They are at school. Fingers crossed the thing that they're gonna stay at school and, we are ready to hit the ground running on 2026. I hope the same is true for you. So today we are gonna take that New Year Energy and we're gonna start a conversation. There's gonna be today, and then next week we're gonna look at how do you take all that energy of the new year and make it sustainable year long? Because you guys know, I've talked about it before, people fail to achieve their goals. 92% of the time. We only actually achieve the goals we set. 8% of the time, it is insane. And with everyone, with their New Year's resolutions and first year of the new year, I wanna set y'all up for success. And so today we are looking at this pattern, this habit that happens again to 92% of us. And that is we set these goals or New Year's resolutions and they feel really good. Now we set'em for a reason. And then we lose momentum by February. You get about six weeks of that, that new goal, new year push. And then we fade away by February. And so I'm gonna keep this practical and we're gonna keep it brain-based. You know, I love the brain science. So we're gonna talk about how motivation actually runs in the brain. We're gonna talk about what you need to follow through. At a biological level, like what your brain needs in order to stay committed to implement your goals. And we're gonna talk about why even disciplined people can have their goals kind of drift off when life keeps going, so here's a frame for you really quick. I'm gonna say, you might hear my dogs in the background. They're like wandering. Once I start talking, they get antsy. They've been asleep for an hour now. But I, my voice now, they hear my voice and so they're getting all antsy. So apologies if you hear them in the background. But here's the frame for today. Goals tend to rely on a very specific kind of energy, and that energy comes from these three different drives. There's this novelty drive, so things are new that. Uh, that drives energy. There's an identity drive that our goals that are tied to our identity are how we see ourselves, not how we want to see ourselves, but how we actually see ourselves. So if we see ourselves as a flake, or if we see ourselves as someone who doesn't follow through. We might not want to see ourselves that way, but that's the true identity of how we do see ourselves, and that will impact our goals and implementation. And then finally, there's this outcome drive of we are pushing toward a particular goal or a particular outcome, and our brain wants that to be immediate. So if we've got bigger goals that are gonna take longer to achieve, that affects the energy that we need in order to actually accomplish the goal. Now, all three of those, the novelty drive, the identity, drive, the outcome drive, those can all feel really powerful in the beginning, in the first six weeks, the brain loves a clear target. The brain loves a clean story, like clearly identified next steps. And so it can, it can get going. With intention, right? It can get, there could be a lot of energy in the early days of your goals, a lot of energy in the early days of the year, sustaining your goal, calls for a different system, sustaining your goal, calls for repeatable actions, for kind of mentally automated repetitive actions when the goal feels familiar. When feedback comes slowly, when you're in that messy middle, right when your calendar looks like, your calendar always does, that's where your brain starts to look for efficiencies. And so automating or taking out the energy required to do the thing, to achieve the goal, that's what becomes critical. And so in this episode, we're gonna talk about the different reasons that goals commonly lose their traction by February. Why it is that, um, that we just fade away? Why is it 92% of people fail to achieve their goals? Each reason has a brain mechanism underneath it. And once you can name that mechanism, you can design around it. And so that's what we're gonna do next week. I said these were two episodes that are gonna go together, and so next week we're gonna talk about what you can do to, overcome this kind of mental block to goal implementation and goal achievement. And so I'm excited for that one. But let's start here. Let's start with why January often feels so good. Like why? Why we start our goals with so much energy. In the early weeks of a new goal, your brain is like running off of the anticipation of goal achievement. It's like that new car smell, but in your brain, anticipation has a chemical signature. And that signature is dopamine, which which we all know by now. Dopamine tracks expected reward and progress signals. And so to put that in just basic language, your brain lights up when it can imagine a payoff, and when it senses movement toward that payoff. And so January is full of easy cues of anticipated payoff. You set the goal, you do the planning for the goal, like all of that, right? And it. It makes your brain really happy. So novelty, you've got a new plan. You built your new system or your timeline or your whatever. You've got a new notebook, you've got a new routine. Novelty grabs our attention really quickly and that attention creates energy and that energy motivates action at the start Now. There's also clarity. There's a lot of clarity early in your goal, right? The first step feels pretty obvious. You can see the first moves, and so starting it feels clean, it feels like, ah, here we go. We're we've, we've already made progress. We've taken the first step. It is awesome. The brain is not negotiating what to do or when to do it or how to, the brain is just doing, and so there's less internal friction. Also early in your goals, you probably are getting some quick feedback because your early actions often produce some visible results. So you do that first week of consistent workouts and you've got that soreness and that soreness tells you it's working or you're chugging your water because that's what you're doing, and now you're going to the bathroom every hour. And that feels like, okay, yes, it is doing what it's supposed to do and I'm making progress. All of that, those progress signals to the brain that tells your brain to stay engaged, that keeps focus and energy on the goal and the implementation. Fourth, I talked about identity. You've got this identity alignment early in goals. Many goals are connected to a story that you respect about yourself. Maybe it's that you're disciplined, that you're committed, that you're serious, that you're growth oriented. That story can carry you for a while. Because you care about living in alignment with it right now. I had mentioned before there's your true identity and there there's the identity that you want for yourself. And so those two, the January energy or that start of a new goal, energy is often aligned with the identity you want for yourself, more so than the identity you actually have for yourself. So it'll carry you for a little while, but then those two are gonna come into conflict. So that momentum that we are experiencing now with all the new goals and resolutions that you have set for yourself for 2026, it makes sense.'cause there are a lot of different layers in your brain that are being queued to take the actions that you're taking. And then let's fast forward a few weeks and the cues are gonna change. I'm so sorry, but they do. So novelty fades, steps start to feel repetitive. The feedback doesn't come as often. Your calendar fills up, your brain stops receiving those easy progress signals, right? Those early wins. And so it starts asking a different question, what does this cost? What does it cost to take the actions I need to implement the goal? And that question leads us to our next mechanism, and that is that your brain's priority is energy management. We've talked about this before. There's a whole episode on the body budget. I'll link it below for you. Your brain runs this huge operation to keep your body alive, and it only has so much energy to do it. And so it manages attention, emotion, decision making, memory, threat detection all day long. It also manages your body. It manages the heart pumping, the breaths coming in and out, right? All your eyes focusing, all of the nervous system activity, the hormones, the metabolic demands. All of that is management that is run through the brain and combination with the nervous system. So when you set a goal, you're adding additional demands on the brain. Even a goal you genuinely want adds cognitive load. It requires planning, remembering, choosing, inhibiting, like not doing right, recovering, protecting time. Early in a goal, the brain tolerates that load more easily because it's got the novelty, the progress cues, that are helping to fund the effort you're getting. Those dopamine hit. But over time, your brain is just gonna shift into efficiency mode. It just does. That's just the life of the brain. And so efficiency mode asks for predictability, for automation, for fewer decisions, not more For the first several months, most of our goals stay in decision mode because we haven't automated them yet. And so decision mode would look like, when am I gonna do this today? Where will it fit? What am I gonna skip? What counts as success? How will I know when I've done what I need to What will I do if the day like goes off the rails? And those questions are normal, right? I mean, come on ladies. Like this is just our life, right? This is just our, this is the mental load of life, particularly for successful women. Those questions demand executive function. Executive function. It's just a part of the brain, right? That metacognition executive function sits heavily on those prefrontal networks that fatigue with use. It's why it's harder to make a decision later in the day than earlier in the day. As leaders, we use those networks constantly. Our days are already filled with prioritizing, with switching contexts, often very rapidly, managing ambiguity, making calls, carrying social complexity. And so by February the goal can feel pretty expensive because it's doing all of your regular work, plus trying to manage this new stuff that you wanna do. So I'm gonna say it doesn't feel expensive. It's not emotionally taxing. It's not emotionally hard, it's neurologically hard, and it's expensive because it's consuming those brain resources, those neurological synapses, that prefrontal cortex, that executive function that you are already have allocated to the real work that you are already doing. And so I'm gonna pause here and say. And the more goals you have set, the greater a demand you're putting on that part of your brain. Which is why I always recommend there's a quick, quick commercial in the middle of the podcast. Um, so you all know I've developed the Success blueprint. It is my goal setting and goal implementation mini course,$26. It's still available. The link is down in the show notes if you'd like to take a look. Um, but it is my my best effort to help women set goals that are really meaningful for them, and then actually get those goals achieved so that you're in that 8% that actually achieve your goals. And I will tell you inside the Success Blueprint, and I'll tell you right now on the podcast, don't set 10 goals. I'm gonna tell you don't set five goals. I'm gonna tell you like three is your sweet spot. If you wanna do one at a time, that's awesome too. I just don't know a lot of women who achieve one goal at a time. Most of us have multiple things going, but the fewer goals the better. For this exact reason. Your brain is gonna max out and once it maxes out, it starts to economize. It starts protecting capacity. It starts trimming optional load, and many of our goals get classified as optional because one, they don't have the immediate response. If you wanna lose 10 pounds, if you wanna get that promotion, if you wanna launch your company, whatever those big juicy goals are that you have that I freaking love for you, you're probably not gonna do'em in a month. You are probably looking at six month, 12 month goals, right? And so your brain is gonna say, Ooh, this is hard. It takes a long time. I'm gonna economize for the stuff that I already know how to do. It's gonna default to the familiar, and you are not even gonna know that it's happening. This happens automatically without your intent, without your conscious reflection. It's just an energy strategy of the brain. And you'll see this in all kinds of common behaviors. You postpone the workout because a late meeting jumped up and that created a time squeeze. You skip a writing session, you're trying to write a book or an article or whatever because you need your mind clear for this difficult conversation that you know is coming up. You avoid the budget review because you've already had to deal with too much friction this week and you just, you can't even Your brain is doing the trade off. It chooses what protects performance in the domains, in the areas that feel most significant to your brain today. Not to you, not the personality of you, but to the, I've gotta keep the whole body alive. Part of you, and this is why 92% of people don't achieve their goals. And this is why that's often not intentional, right? It doesn't look like, oh, I'm not gonna pursue this goal anymore. Like I give it up. It happens through these repeated deferrals of putting off the workout, of not doing the things that you need to do in order to achieve the goal, and you just build your momentum in a different direction. All right, and there's one more thing that I wanna talk about today, and then again, next week we're gonna talk about what you can do about this, and that is our addiction to outcomes. I don't know how else to say it. Most of our goals are written as outcomes, and I talk about this too, look, in the success blueprint I talk about like what is the outcome you're driving toward? That isn't your goal, but that is. That is a part of goal setting. It just is. You wanna hit a number, you wanna earn the credential, you wanna lose X number of pounds, you wanna complete the project, you wanna build the habit, you wanna publish the thing, like whatever outcomes are useful because they give us direction, right? That's what we're, we're driving toward the outcome. At the same time, our brains are wired for patterns. And this is just evolutionary. It's how it keeps us alive. Patterns form through consistent repetition. That's how we build our habits. That's how automaticity, that's how like the muscle memory gets built, and that is how our actions become more efficient over time. That's how we reduce the mental load when goals stay outcome focused. The daily experience can feel disconnected. Why? Because today you're gonna do one small little thing and that outcome stays far away. The brain gets a weak progress queue, and that weak queue reduces engagement, and that's how you start that slide. Many goals also lead on these distant milestones as the marker of success. When we know that our brain responds better to the immediate, to the nearer markers that show movement today. So when your only feedback comes weeks away, that engagement drops even if you're still committed to the goal. So this is why we talk. I've talked multiple times on different episodes about my I, I list the three things that I'm grateful for every day. The reticular activating system, your brain is gonna look for the things that you tell it to look for. That's what I'm talking about here. When success is so distant as to feel theoretical, well your brain is gonna discount that and it's gonna focus on the stuff that feels immediate, that you're giving attention to, and that is feeding it, giving it the cues today. And so as you're thinking about. Goal setting. When you're thinking, not goal setting. When you think about goal implementation, you wanna think about the patterns and the small wins that you can log and explicitly tell your brain this was a win today. As small as it might be, you want the consistent pattern of logging a win as you implement your goal, because as we've talked about many times. Your brain is trying to economize energy use. It does that by simplifying, and it is gonna simplify the new stuff first simply because the neural pathways aren't written as deeply. If you're trying to change your behavior, it's gonna default to what is known because what is known. It's just easier for it to do, even if it doesn't bring you the satisfaction of the life that you want. Again, there's nothing conscious in what your brain is doing. It's all happening at a biological level trying to to protect energy and resources so that pattern that you build. Or don't build is gonna show up in February. And again, this is what we're gonna talk about next week in our episode. So today we've talked about why goal setting, the beginning stages of goal implementation in January are so easy. You've got novelty, you've got clarity, you've got feedback. It's tied to your identity and idealized identity, but identity nonetheless. February. You February. Brain is focused on efficiency, conserving energy for the long haul. You've got decision fatigue. You've got your social and cognitive loads that compete with one another. Your willpower reaches its limit outcome-focused goals. Lack the patterns, the systems that your brain uses to automate follow through. Now, if any of this is resonating with you, good, it means that you can approach your goals with the same strategic intelligence that you bring to every other part of your life, right? This is how you get to success, and so. Join me next week when I'm gonna give you two very clear actions that you can take to reduce friction and build follow through. You wanna automate follow through in a way that supports your brain over time. Steps are practical. They are specific. They are designed for women with full lives. I'm excited for it. Now, if this episode spoke to you, I would love for you to share it with a woman who's running on empty. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline, and please don't forget to like and subscribe. It really helps a little podcast like mine. And if you could leave a review, oh, I would deeply appreciate that. Building those reviews on Spotify, apple, YouTube. It really does help get this podcast in the ears of other women whom it could benefit. And don't forget, you can always grab one of our free resources, like the Thought Catching Journal prompts, Year in Review, Mental Load Reset. All of that is available on the Women Lead Well website. And I'll link them in the show notes below. And again, if you want some focused support in your goal setting and goal implementation journey, you can check out the Success Blueprint. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible. And you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm, and this is Joyfully Unstoppable.