Why Your New Year’s Goals Fail Every Time

Every January, parents set big goals.
 And every February, most of those goals are gone.

In this episode, Ben explains why New Year’s goals fail every time—and what actually works instead.

The problem isn’t willpower.
 It’s not motivation.
 And it’s not that you’re doing something wrong.

Most people start with what they want to do.
Real change starts with who you want to be.

You’ll learn why identity matters more than goals, why habits stick only when they match who you believe you are, and how small daily choices can lead to big change over time.

If you’re tired of repeating the same patterns—especially with your teen—this episode will help you do something different this year.

Simple. Practical. And doable.

Press play and start becoming the parent you want to be.

Are You Caught in the Parent Trap?

Discover the hidden patterns that are keeping you stuck—and how to break free.

Take this quick (and eye-opening) quiz to uncover which common parenting trap you’re falling into with your teen.
Get a personalized roadmap to help you parent with more clarity, confidence, and connection—starting today.

https://benpughcoaching.com/parenttrapquiz

Transcript

Ben: 0:00

I'm Ben Pugh and you're listening to IMPACT! Parenting with Perspective. This podcast is all about helping parents manage the mental and emotional drama that comes with parenting teens so they can focus on what's most important. Building rock solid relationships and having a powerful impact on their teen's life. Join me each week as I dive into real tools to help you and your teen turn struggles into strengths.

ben_2_12-30-2025_092708: 0:32

Happy New Year. if you are listening to this, the day that it comes out, happy New Year Today's the day. Hopefully you stayed up late last night. Had a lot of fun and got to sleep in this morning. If not, no problem. Hopefully you're just having a great day, and thank you for making me the first podcast that you've listened to this year. If you aren't listening to this on New Year's, that's okay. This will all still apply. The reason we're talking about this. New Year's is the time of year that everyone online starts talking about goals and New Year's resolutions. And there's a problem with this. Most people don't actually accomplish their New Year's goals. I remember hearing recently that. By February, most people have already dropped their New Year's resolutions entirely. They've lost momentum. They've lost hope, and they just quietly go back to doing things the, the, the way that they used to do'em before their New Year's goals. Now, I want you to understand, after working with parents from all over the world, I can tell you that parents are no different from all these normal people that don't accomplish their goals. The thing is, the parents that I've met from around the world, they want to change. They want to improve, and they want this next year to feel better than the last. And if you are like me, and if you're like the parents that I work with, you probably feel the same. You want the change, you want to improve, but year after year, you feel like you are stuck in the same old traps. So today I want to make this a little bit more simple and I want to talk to you about what doesn't work when it comes to New Year's goals, and more importantly, I want. To talk to you about what actually does work, and I wanna make it super simple and super doable so that this year can be the year that you actually reach your goals and you create change. So first, let's take a few minutes and let's talk about the number one thing that doesn't work when it comes to New Year's goals or New Year's resolutions. The number one thing is this. Most people. Jump into New Year's goals and New Year's resolutions, and they jump straight into doing, they're like, man, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this exercise program, I'm gonna do this diet, I'm gonna do this budgeting, I'm gonna do whatever it is. They make goals, they make a plan, and they promise themselves that I'm going to do this. This time, I'm gonna try even harder. But they skip one critical step. The one step that will make it so this actually works. They skip the step of stopping and thinking about who they want to be or who they need to be in order to reach those goals. And here's why this matters. You can change your actions or your behaviors without changing your identity. It's possible. People do it all the time temporarily. But the problem is if you change your behaviors without changing your identity, your behaviors will always drift back to match your identity or who you believe you are. And the truth is, you can totally white knuckle change for a little while. You can just grind and work hard and work, work, work, hustle, hustle, hustle. But eventually identity always wins. This is why New Year's resolutions feel so motivating in January, and yet by February they're just overwhelming and heavy and we quit. The problem is if you are trying to create change. New Year's goals and New Year's resolutions are all about creating change. If you are trying to do that from the behavior component, you are going to fail. You're going to quit early. Let's take a minute and let's talk about what actually does work. I'll break this into two simple steps. Now, before I do that though, I do want to give you a warning. Your human brain is designed to like sexy. Your brain thinks that complication equals sophistication. That's not the truth Typically. Complexity is nothing more than a distraction and eye candy for your brain. So don't get turned off by how simple this is. See this simplicity as one of the things that's actually going to help you create the change that you want to see. Let's talk about the thing that actually does work, approaching your goals first at the identity level, and then second, building habits that support that identity. Let's break it down a little bit. Inside my coaching program, I teach a simple model called Be. Do have. That means if I be the person I want to be, I just, I use the example of being a non-smoker. If you're a non-smoker, there are specific things that you do that help you have the health of a non-smoker, and one of the things that you do is that you avoid purchasing cigarettes because if you were to do the behavior of purchasing cigarettes. You would feel embarrassed. You would feel shame, guilt, a complete disalignment of your identity. That's what keeps you from doing that because you have one identity. You behave a a specific way, which creates the results that you have. And honestly, the reason people struggle with this model is what I talked about before. It's too simple. It's not sexy. I have taught this to parents, I've taught it to teens, and some of the times people are like, well, that's it. That's just too simple. Yeah, that's it. It doesn't have to be sexy. It doesn't have to be exciting. Simple is powerful, and if I can help you focus on who you want to be, I can help you start changing your behavior. The doing component. Like when people are like, man, I'm gonna do this diet, I'm gonna do this workout, I'm gonna do this budget. Yeah. That's exciting. I get it when people are like, man, I'm gonna have a six pack. I'm gonna have so much money. I, yeah, that's exciting. But nobody wants to talk about the boring, foundational part, which is identity. And that's why when most people talk about New Year's resolutions. They've never completed'em. They talk about what they're going to do, what they're gonna have, but they never talk about, oh yeah, well I tried that last year and it didn't work, and I tried it the year before and it didn't work. If the way that we did in goals and resolutions actually worked, it would've worked by now. So this year I want to invite you to try something different. What do I want to do? Or what do I want to accomplish? Or what do I want to have? Ask a better question. Who do I want to be? Now let's talk about how we can make identity practical, how we can make it something that actually works. So we're not going to over complicate this. Even though your brain, I already told you this, it is wired to believe that complexity is important. No, it's not. Most of the time complexity is just to help you get excited. Your brain loves complex things. That's why we have such a big, complex brain. Here's how simple this is. If you want to change. Who you are as a parent in a parenting moment. In fact, it could be before like, man, I've argued with my teen about unloading and loading the dishwasher a hundred times. Over the past three months. It's probably gonna come up again. The next time it does come up, who do I want to be? Or if you missed it and you just argued with your teen over unloading and loading the dishwasher, again, ask yourself, you know, what if by chance that comes up again, who do I want to be? Do I want to be calm, curious firm, but loving? Do I want to be patient? Who do I want to be? The process is simple and most people skip this. Take a minute and understand who do I want to be. Most parents have never taken the time to define who they want to be, and if you work with me, that is probably the first thing that you and I are going to talk about. And if you don't know who you want to be. The thing that you've gotta understand is your identity is like GPS. If you got in your car, let's say you have a brand new car, nice screen that you can use the maps to like help you get to where you want to go, and your car's like, all right dude, tell me where do you want to go? And you're like. I don't wanna tell you where I want to go. I just want you to help me get there. Like tell me what to do next. There's a quote in Alice in Wonderland where Alice is like, man, I don't know where I should go. And the Cheshire cat is like, well, where do you want to end up? Like what's your final destination? And she's like, well, it doesn't really matter. And the Cheshire cat is like, well then it doesn't really matter which direction you pick. Most parents don't know who they want to be, and if you're like most parents, if you don't know who you want to be, it is nearly impossible to consistently do the things that will support that identity and that will help you achieve the results that you want to achieve. Identity is key and it's more simple than most people wanna make it. Really just look at who you're being right now and who you would rather be, and then start moving in that direction. So let's talk about habits that support identity. The first piece of the puzzle is identity. You have to know who you want to be. We've covered that. The second piece of this puzzle, and this is a real simple puzzle, and there's only two pieces. The second piece of this puzzle is habits. Habits aren't just actions, they're not just behaviors. Habits are deeper than that. It's easy to look at the be, do, have, model, and be like, okay, being that's identity doing. Let's see, I do habits. Habits fall in the do part of be, do, have no they don't. Habits are a part of who you are. Habits are deeper than just simple behaviors. Over time, your habits define who you are. They become a part of you. You become a part of your habits, you, your identity is reinforced by your habits, and your habits are reinforced by your identity. I was putting this into chat, GPT to help me kind of outline my podcast, which it does a really good job of. I love how it helps me, but even it couldn't understand the depth and the com, the man I just told you not to get too complex. It's simple. It sounds complex, but the way that our habits reinforce our identity and. Your identity reinforces your habits. That is a cycle that will strengthen who you are and it will strengthen your habits and as you like, if you go through a whole year reinforcing your identity and your habits, I promise you, you will be unrecognizable to yourself next year. Your relationship with your teenager will improve. Your relationship with, with your spouse, will improve your relationship to money and finances and work and whatever else. It will improve if you improve. So the first part of this puzzle is identity. The second part. Are your habits. So instead of obsessing over goals and New Year's resolutions, ask yourself, what habits do I need to cultivate to create the change, to be the person that has the change that I want? I've worked with mothers who have chosen habits like eating better food. Moving their body more, being more active, budgeting, having more empowering conversations with their teen, with their spouse, waking up earlier, meditating, praying. And here's the interesting part, they didn't focus on being a better parent. That happened as a side effect. That's like the, like when you go out, say you're gardening. And you want some beautiful tomatoes, you're not gonna put fertilizer on the actual fruit. That little green tomato that you're hoping turns red and ripe and you can eat. No. You're gonna fertilize the soil and you're going to trust that having healthy fruit that's delicious is a convenient side effect of fertilizing the roots. That's what we're doing here. The problem is most people, they wanna be healthier. They wanna be a better parent, they want to be wealthier, but they make that the focus rather than going through this simple process of asking themselves, well, who do I want to be? What would that even look like? How do I want to handle these situations? What would I want when people see me? What are they gonna think? What are they gonna feel? Who do I want to be? And then follow that up by what are the habits that I need to help reinforce who I want to be? One of those habits could be, you know what, I'm gonna get up and do something active every morning. Notice how we don't have to focus on going to the gym. you could get up. Do pushups, go for a walk, do something. Eventually, you might get to the point where you're like, man, pushups and going for a walk are fantastic, but they don't do it for me anymore. I'm gonna get a gym membership. I. When you know, like, no, I want to be someone who's healthy. I wanna be someone who has the energy that I can play with my teens, and we can go on hikes, we can do active things that I can play spike ball or cross net or basketball or whatever. Like see who you wanna be and then create the habits that will reinforce that way of being. So to close. First of all, happy New Year. This year is going to be fantastic. I promise you, if you focus on identity and if you focus on your habits, this year will be better than the last. You now know the secret that most people miss. Being a better parent doesn't have to be the goal. Being wealthier, being healthier doesn't have to be the goal. That can be a convenient side effect of you starting to be the version of yourself that you want to be. When you tap into the identity, when you start building some new habits, I promise you'll be a better spouse. You'll be a better. Parent, you'll be a better leader, a better human. So this year, instead of setting another set of New Year's resolutions and goals on this big old list that you'll lose and forget about in a few weeks, try something quieter, try something more simple, and try something more powerful. Decide who you want to be and start practicing that identity today. Repetition is the mother of all learning. If you can practice being the person that you want to be 365 times over the next year, I promise you that's a lot of reps, you will be someone different. And someone more aligned with who you want to be. So I want to just invite you, if you want help defining your identity and building the habits that support who you want to reach out to. You can email me at ben@benpughcoaching.com, or you can just keep listening to this podcast and learning one week at a time. Either way, I want you to have a happy New Year, and I want you to truly start being the mom that you have always wanted to be. I'll talk to you soon.