It’s the end of the year, we’re preparing for the next year, and I just want to say thank you for being here with us! This podcast turns three next year and that means three years of improving our lives, reaching for our goals, and being absolute chingonas! I am so proud of all of you, whether you’re new listeners or you’ve been here since the beginning. I hope to see you all next year too!

As you know, this podcast is devoted to helping you reach your goals and make your dreams a reality. Right now, that looks like writing down your New Year’s resolutions and making them happen in 2025. But you can’t rely on motivation alone to keep you going. 

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about why most New Year’s resolutions fail and how to actually stick to yours. Motivation comes and goes, but habits stick with you when the motivation has run out. There’s a science to creating healthy habits, and we’re going over it together in today’s episode.

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello, hello! Welcome back to this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution podcast. I just want to thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Here we are at the end of 2024 and it’s about to be 2025. Maybe you’re already listening to this in 2025. And this is going to be the third year. I want to say in April, it’s going to be the podcast’s third birthday.

So we’ve had the podcast for three years. And a lot of you have been listening from the beginning. A lot of you are new to listening. Um, maybe you’ve turned your friends onto the podcast, but I just appreciate every single listen, every single one of you. I do think that time and attention are the one things that we don’t get back, right?

Like how you spend your time and what you give your attention to, that’s invaluable. You’re never really going to get that back. So for you to spend. 20 minutes to an hour with me every week. I greatly, greatly appreciate it. If you’ve taken anything away from this podcast, please let me know. Um, we also have an Instagram page for the podcast.

It’s called Chingona Revolution without I. So it’s completely spelt out without the little star for the I. Unfortunately for, um, some of the podcast platforms, we had to blurt out the I or else it would blurt out the whole word because it considers, considers it a bad word, the word of chingona. Um, so with that being said, let’s get into today’s episode.

In today’s episode, I want to cover Why it is that people fail at New Year’s resolutions. Why is it that they give up on them? Why do they fall off the wagon? Why is it that they start off really consistently and then they fall off? And then I also want to give you some tips as to how you can ensure that you stick to your resolution.

So by the end of this episode, you’re going to understand what are the common mistakes. And then you are also going to understand about five or so tips as to how you can continue with being consistent and actually achieve your goals. All right. So let’s just start off with some statistics.

when a new year begins, it comes with A amplified level of motivation to reach these ambitious resolutions, right? Whether it’s getting yourself to the gym or starting to journal and meditate or eating healthy or let’s see, those are kind of the most common ones, right? Working out, eating overall, kind of like wellness, or the other one is spending habits.

Or another one could be, um, like completely cutting something out of your life. Like, I’m going to quit smoking, or I’m going to quit alcohol, or I’m going to quit doing this. Or, I’m going to quit complaining. I’m going to quit being reactive. And, It, we, we go into the year with these really good intentions.

And if you haven’t listened to last week’s podcast episode, I recommend that you listen to that where we talk all about setting an intention word for, for the year, but back to this podcast episode, some of the research actually indicates that 23 percent of people quit their resolution by the end of the first week.

So that means if we have a hundred people who all have resolutions on January 1st. Before it is January 7th, 23 of those people have already quit their resolutions and 43 percent of people quit by the end of January. So of those 100 people, 43 percent quit. have quit by the time that February comes around.

So why, why is it that we feel all this motivation and then suddenly we begin to get inconsistent or we stop showing up for ourselves? What is it that happens? And first, I just want to, to mention that Khay and I talked about this in her podcast episode that came out a few weeks ago where we talk about how motivation is this feeling and you can’t rely on motivation because motivation comes and goes.

And just like in one moment you can feel really upset and in another moment you can feel really happy. There’s going to be times when you don’t feel that motivated. And the thing is that people tend to set resolutions. Relying on motivation. And I get this question a lot as a coach. How do I stay motivated?

How do I stay motivated? And the thing is that motivation is nothing more than a feeling. You can’t stay motivated and rely on that motivation in order to reach your goals. What you actually need is to have a system and being able to form habits and you need discipline. You don’t need motivation. And when we think of discipline, especially in this world of, you know, feminine energy and flow and releasing resistance, which I’m very much into, I’m very much into the spiritual world, but discipline does not mean hustle.

It means that you honor your word. It means that you trust yourself. even just recording this podcast episode, right? Like that was a form of discipline.

There were so many other things pulling me in different directions, but I was like, no, I have to get this to my podcast manager by today before it gets too dark, because then the lighting gets all bad. And we do record this with a video, which we put up on YouTube. So. I had to really be disciplined about let’s record this podcast episode now, rather than be late and feel all of this anxiety, right?

So discipline is not hustling. Discipline just simply means that you show up for yourself, even when you don’t feel like it. Okay. So let’s go back to more of the common reasons that people abandon their resolution. So the first one is that they’re relying on motivation instead of discipline. The second reason is that people set unrealistic goals. And I’ve talked about this in the past, I mean, I feel like I’ve been talking about it for the last few weeks, right?

With as we were talking about courage driven Latina and how one of the biggest mistakes people make is they just try to do a

 bunch of things at once and it gets overwhelming  when we set unrealistic goals. This feels good. It feels like, Oh yeah, I’m going to make a change. And in order for me to make a change, I need to start going to the gym five times a week, make sure I’m eating clean, completely eliminate soda. I’m going to journal every day. I’m also going to meditate every day.

And if you’re not doing those things on a consistent basis, it’s going to take so much of your willpower and so much of your energy to start doing all of those things. And you might do them for the first few days, right? But let’s like, just think about your life. Let’s say that you’re trying to do all of these things.

Okay. So you wake up, maybe you have kids, you have to get them ready for school and you’re like, okay, wait, wait, but I need to meditate. And you may be like kind of half assed the meditation. And then you’re rushing to the gym, the gym is super packed, you get home late, you don’t even have any groceries and you’re trying to eat clean and the, so the, the fridge, the fridge is stacked with sodas.

So what are you going to do? You’re going to quickly grab what it is that you have, right? And as we put this into perspective like that, of course, a lot of people quit within that first week. How are you going to keep all those changes up within a week? Whenever we want to create new habits, we have to start with one habit at a time.

So if we’re setting these unrealistic goals, it can feel really good while we’re setting them because it feels like, yes, this is what I need to change. But it’s actually important to set smaller goals and let yourself overachieve them. Because if you try to do all of these different things as your resolution, let’s say all those things of going to the gym, stop drinking soda, journaling and meditating and eating clean.

If those of all of those things were your goals, And maybe you get to half of them. You’re not going to be like, Oh yeah, I hit 50 percent of my goal. You’re going to be like, damn, I missed 50 percent of my goal because that’s how our brain works. Right. Instead of being like, Oh, I at least got myself to go to the gym.

Or I at least stopped drinking soda. No, we’re focused on the things we didn’t do. And because this is how our brain works, it’s actually really important to focus on one specific thing. This is what we teach inside of Courage Driven Latina. Pick one main thing that you want to work on. The thing that’s going to make everything else easier or unnecessary.

And as we think about that same circumstance, maybe the goal is simply getting yourself to the gym, right? It’s not even the meal prepping. It’s not even the soda thing. If you just get yourself to go to the gym, however many times a week you want to go to the gym. Well, guess what? You’re probably going to drink more water.

Because you’re working out more, which means you’re naturally going to drink less soda and just work on that first before you add something else. So again, the reasons thus far that people abandon their resolutions are that they are relying on motivation instead of discipline. They are setting unrealistic goals.

And then the third one is lack of specificity. So whenever we aren’t clear about what it is that we want to do and creating actionable steps as to how we’re going to do it. You’re just going to be lost, right? Like if you say, oh, I’m just gonna work out more. What does workout more look like? How many times are you gonna go to the gym?

What are you gonna do when you’re at the gym? Are you gonna try a kickboxing class? Are you gonna try yoga? Or if you say, I wanna complain less in the the next year, well, what does it mean to complain less? Does that mean you’re going to react? differently, whenever your partner or your kids or your friends say something to you, are you going to practice meditation?

Like, how are you going to do it? What is the action that you’re going to do? And if you’re inside courage driven Latina, I want you to look at the courage project plan and see how all of these different things are already included in your plan to ensure you do not make these mistakes. So you have to be really specific about this resolution of yours about this goal of yours.

And Again, the actionable steps. What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? Another one that people say is, Oh, I’m just going to eat healthier. What the heck does eat healthier even mean? Right? We have some people saying that, Oh, any animal products is unhealthy. And then we have other people saying, no, you know, like soy products are unhealthy.

And we have, I mean, there’s just so much. information out there about nutrition and health. Like, what does it mean for you? Does it mean less soda? Does it mean less carbs? Does it mean, um, an anti inflammatory diet? Does it mean gluten free? What does it mean for you? All right. The next reason that people abandon their resolutions is that they aren’t doing the work to monitor their progress.

So the thing is that we can see where we are right now and then we can see the end goal that we want to get to. But if we’re not tracking the progress that we have made, along the way, it can feel like we’re not really making much progress because you as a human being are living your life every single day.

You’re not noticing the little micro changes that occur. I remember seeing a video on Tik TOK back in like 2020 or 2021 about progress and how it can feel really slow. And they use the example of toilet paper or a paper towel roll and how every day they’re just kind of like, taking a sheet off of the paper towel roll, and it doesn’t seem like much is happening.

But then next thing, you know, a few minutes later, after pulling off one sheet of the paper towel, it’s suddenly a lot smaller. And that’s the same with our progress in life. It can feel like we’re not making much advancement. And if you’re not tracking your progress, like how many cups of water you drink or how many times you went to the gym this week, or maybe you’re only looking at the scale and you’re not considering, okay, well I lost body fat or I increased muscle mass, which weighs the same, right?

 are you able to actually track the progress that you’re making because you won’t be able to see it unless you intentionally begin to track it. So that is the fourth reason absence of tracking. So like not keeping track of your progress and then that doesn’t allow you to celebrate your achievements as you go.

And then that’s when we get into the all or nothing mentality of like, Oh, I’m never going to lose the weight or I’m always just going to be this way. I’m always going to be reactive with my kids. I’m always going to be impatient. I’m always going to feel insecure and none of that’s true, right? We have to go through the journey and the process, but it’s important for us to track how we are doing along the way. Number five. So another reason why we abandon our resolutions is because we aren’t forming habits. So, if you are attempting drastic changes without integrating them into your daily routines, it’s just not going to stick, right? We have to think about habit formation and how our habits formed. Well, I’m pretty sure I recommended this the last time I did a similar episode about making changes in our lives specifically, I think it was around new year’s resolutions.

I recommended the book Atomic Habits. Highly, highly recommend that book. It is an actionable book about habit formation and in the book, I mean, I haven’t read it actually in a long time. I should probably, I should probably reread it myself, but if I can remember some of the key points from the book, they talk about how it takes about 90 days to form a habit.

And when you are trying to form a bunch of different habits at the same time, it can be overwhelming, but there is actually a process and a science around habit formation. And it helps you pick which habits you want to change. But the thing is that once you start doing something as a habit, you no longer have to think about it.

So let’s say. that you want to drink more water, you want to go to the gym, you want to start eating cleaner, and you also want to, start doing like meal prepping, like you want to make it a habit to meal prep. Well, maybe one of the first habits that you begin to form is just going to the gym five times a week.

And that just becomes the thing you do, right? You no longer have to think about it. Just like you don’t have to think about getting a cup of tea or a cup of coffee in the morning, or just like you don’t have to think about snoozing your alarm, right? Unfortunately, I mean, that’s definitely one of my, one of my habits.

I snooze at least once. And I’m at peace with it because I have been able to kind of accommodate my life for that, right? If it’s not like I’m running late to things, actually, that’s a life. Um, my kickboxing instructor instructor is listening to this. She was like, girl, you’re always running in a minute or two late.

So, but I’m at peace with that. I, that’s not something that I feel super inspired to change at this moment, but let’s say that you are in this place, right? Where you want to just have a healthier 2025 or a more, Disciplined 2025. That’s one of the things I am working on. I am working on more discipline.

I have bad ADHD and I can get so distracted, especially because my business runs on creating content. Look at me getting distracted right now, totally going off topic. And because a lot of my work is to create content, sometimes I can get stuck in consuming content. So that is one of the things I’m really working on for the next year.

Anyway, back to habit formation. If I was, in your shoes and I wanted to drink water, workout, eat better, begin to do meal prep, eliminate soda. I would just start with one of those things and form it as a habit. So that could be, as I mentioned, getting to the gym or maybe just drinking more water. Like maybe that is the habit and you can form a habit.

Again, I highly recommend the book, but you form a habit by making it really. Easy to achieve that habit. So let’s say that we’re sticking with the gym one first. Well, the night before. Let’s say you want to go to the gym in the morning, the night before you pick out what you’re going to wear, you decide what gym you’re going to, and what, just pick one, honestly, but I go to a few different gyms.

So decide what you’re going to work on when you’re at the gym or what class you’re going to attend and make all of those decisions ahead of time so that you make it really easy for you to do it the next day. And once that becomes second nature, then you can add another habit such as, okay, now let’s eliminate soda and how are we going to do that? Let’s make it really easy. Let’s make it really easy to eliminate soda and really hard to drink soda. I remember watching this video. When I think I was in community college and they were taught, I don’t even know what this class was about, but I remember this video specifically where they had done this research where there was an office assistant.

So she sat at the front desk of this office. It was some type of medical office, like either chiropractor or like dental office, something like that. Probably not a dental office because they did this test where they had a jar of Hershey kisses. And one of the days they had it right by her desk. So the jar of Hershey kisses was on the desk where she sat and greeted people.

And what they found was that she ate significantly more Hershey’s kisses when they were on her desk versus when they put them on the other side of the room and she had to stand up and walk to go get them on the other side of the room. And that’s a perfect example. of how in one circumstance they made eating the Hershey’s Kisses easy and then in another circumstance they just put them a little bit further away, right?

It wasn’t that difficult. It wasn’t like they locked them away in a box, but even that difference was Fundamental in the results that she had and how many kershey kisses she had. And in that same video, they talked about how when you go to a buffet, if you sit closer to the food, you’re more likely to get up more times.

So just knowing this when it comes to habit formation, if you’re looking to eliminate one thing from your life, make it really difficult to get to that thing. So for example, um, I had a client who was like watching TV all the time and I was like, unplug the television, like simply unplug the television, make it hard for you where you were going to have to like, go plug it in and like do all these other things.

And then another client, I think we were talking about, she wanted to drink less. And I was like, simply get rid of all the alcohol in your house, make it difficult for you to just open the fridge and grab something to drink and then make what you want. easier. So let’s say you want to stop drinking soda, get rid of the soda in your fridge and put sparkling water in there instead, or put whatever it is that you do want to be able to drink in there instead.

So for habit formation, my tip for you, which I’ve just rambled on about is that you should make it really difficult for yourself to do the habit you don’t want to do. And then the other thing is we can’t eliminate habits. That’s another thing from the book. It’s like all coming back to me now, but you can’t eliminate habits.

You can only replace habits. So let’s say that you want to stop drinking soda. You just, you’re not just going to stop drinking. You have to replace it with something because, and I want to say the other book was called the power of habit. Is it

by Charles Duhigg. I also read that one and that, so actually these books do not conflict with one another. The Power of Habit, it’s more about the research of how a habit works and what they found in that book is that every habit has a cue, a routine and a reward. So a cue is what remind, what almost like reminds you of, okay.

We have to go do this habit. I’m going to give you some examples because I think it makes more sense if I give you the examples and then the routine is you doing the habit and then the reward is how you feel after. So let’s just use the soda example because it’s easy. So the cue is, I’m thirsty. I want something to drink or I’m craving something.

So that cue in your mind. inspires you the routine, which is to get up, go to the fridge, grab the drink, drink the drink. And then the reward is, okay, cool. I feel complete. I drink something. So we can’t replace the cue, right? We’re still going to have the urge to go drink something. So we have to replace the routine.

And that routine would be putting sparkling water in the fridge instead of soda, for example. But anyway, these two books, the power of habits and Atomic Habits. I had to go turn around to see the book. Yes, Atomic Habits are really good and they compliment one another because again, the power of habits, more about the research and what goes on in the brain. And it’s, it’s a very interesting book. If you’re just looking for the practicalities, like what’s the strategy to change a habit, then, I recommend Atomic Habits.

That one’s more practical. It’s more like, how can you apply it to your actual life? That one’s a little bit more self helping and overall a good book. Okay. So to recap, the common reasons why we abandon our resolutions are because we’re relying on motivation instead of discipline. We are setting unrealistic goals.

We lack, lack specificity. are not tracking our progress, and then we are neglecting habit formation. So those are the five reasons that we abandoned resolutions. As we went through those different reasons why they were abandoned, I kind of already talked about the things that you could do, but I’m still going to give you a few more strategies So that you can stay consistent.

Notice I didn’t say strategy so you can stay motivated. You are not going to stay motivated. Be at peace with that. That is okay. So here are some of the strategies to ensure that you can stay consistent. First, you want to set specific and actionable goals. How do you do this? You have to define clear and realistic Objectives to create a sense of direction and a sense of accomplishment.

You really want to have something specific, right? Like, again, it’s not just going to be, I’m going to work out more. I want to be healthier. It has to be, I’m going to go to the gym five times a week. Two of those days, I’m going to do cardio. Three of those days, I’m going to do weightlifting. I’m just making something up right now, right?

Or I’m going to go to the yoga studio that I found in recent, that I recently found and I really like, I’m going there five times a week or not being reactive to my children means anytime I feel triggered, I’m going to make myself go into the bathroom for 30 seconds and breathe. And then I’m allowed to react instead of just reacting, right?

So being really specific about what it is that you are going to do. The second strategy is to develop new habits. Again, I highly recommend checking out the power of habit or more importantly, atomic habits. Strategy number three is to monitor your progress. So track your achievements, see like really hype yourself up, keep, that’s how you’re going to keep up The, the feeling of excitement and the motivation, even if some days you feel down with motivation, but keeping track of your progress shows you that you are making progress rather than just waiting for the end result.

Cause that’s when we get stuck in this, like all or nothing mentality. Another one, which we do inside of Courage Driven Latina, it’s literally embedded inside of your courage project plan is plan for obstacles. So before you are going full force onto this, this resolution of yours, and you may be listening to this a few days after the new year, it’s not too late to do this now, but anticipate the challenges that you might come across and create a plan for them.

So inside Courage Driven Latina, this is your obstacle contingency plan, but you can do this. on your own. You can do this with whatever it is that you’re looking to do for your resolution. Think about, okay, what is a possible thing that can get in my way and how do I want to react to it? What is it that I’m going to do?

And then last but not least, seek support. Okay. This is also something, if you are encouraged to join Latina, this is already built into the program. But how can you find somebody to hold you accountable? Like, does somebody in your circle also have the same goal or resolution or intention that you do? And how can you help one another out?

How can you pick somebody up when they’re feeling down? How can they pick you up when you’re feeling down? How can you maybe go to the gym together? Maybe you start going to the new gym together? Accountability is the secret to life, y’all. It really is. Like, being surrounded by a community who gets where you’re going is the number one in life.

The moment that my circle became, I mean, I have an amazing circle and I always have, but my circle wasn’t really doing what I was doing and now my circle is a little bit bigger or I guess I have multiple circles, right? I have, I have my friends from college, I have my friends from entrepreneurship, I have my family members who are also my friends.

 I’m talking specifically about my frimas, but these As soon as I had a circle of entrepreneurial friends, that is what made my business possible. And a bunch of my friends had podcasts before I did, and it was so helpful to be surrounded by them. So find somebody who you can rely on, who they can rely on you and hold each other account.

 That is how you ensure that you follow through on your new year’s resolutions. That’s how you ensure that you don’t give up on them. And I know that we’re at the time of this release, it’s New Year’s Eve, so you’re maybe listening to this in the new year.

If You want to join us inside of Courage Driven Latina, send me a DM. The doors are closed, but I know it’s the beginning of the year. We just closed enrollment a couple of weeks ago. People are killing it inside of this program. If this podcast resonated with you, trust me, the Courage Project framework that we teach you inside of this program includes everything I covered today.

We have a whole process for it. And more. You will not give up on your goals and dreams inside of this program. In 90 days, you will have your first project completely executed. So send me a DM. We don’t have really anything on the website because we’re actually not open for enrollment. But if you’re listening to this podcast episode and you’re like, I don’t want 2025 to look the way 2024 did, then join us.

I want to make sure that this is the year that you do the things that you say you want to do. This is the year that you build massive, massive self trust, the year that you build massive confidence and the year That you do exactly. Wait, I already said that. I already said that piece. And the year that you make your dreams a reality, not just in your head, not just in your journal, but those that people can see as well.

People can see it outside of you. All right, y’all. Thank you so much. Happy new year. And I will see you on the podcast next week.