So, how are those New Year’s resolutions holding up? Only 8% of all resolutions ever get resolved, many fail within the first week and month. While our intentions are good to better ourselves in the new year, we often buckle when our routines are broken, and the new habit gets set aside. Resolutions require change and changes are hard, very hard.

Why is change so hard?

Changes in our lives fail under two conditions:

• Our commitment to change fails because we are afraid of just how powerful we could be once we have made the change.
• We avoid the change because we don’t have the belief that our change, once completed, will matter at all.

There were many times in my life when I backed down from change because I knew it would disrupt way too many lives or put me in a position of power. My anxiety would get the better of me, and the fear of actually taking authority would drive me to stop. While not all changes in life will put us into this scenario, only the bigger more life-changing ones do.

Then, there were the changes that I began to undertake only to lose hope that the change would actually amount to anything worthwhile. While this cut-bait approach has been beneficial to me at times, I had to dig deep to really understand that the reason why I was leaving the change behind was that it was a waste of time and not just the avoidance of the task at hand. We easily can convince ourselves that chance is not worthy of our effort if we deep down feel that we have no hope of accomplishing because of the many barriers that we put up.

Whatever it is you are looking to change in the upcoming year, don’t get consumed by it. Paralysis by analysis can creep in and destroy your dream if you are always worried that you are going to fail or that your change will not make a difference. Keep chasing your goals and never forget the purpose of them. You will never really know how powerful you can be or how amazing your change will look until you cross the finish line. Your change may not be perfect, but at least it will be accomplished.