If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026.

The New Year’s Resolution Check-In

It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound.

If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed?

If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought.

So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself.

The Limits of Free Will and Willpower

And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE!. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain.

That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multiple monsters holding hands together to get it done. And in fact, most of those insurmountable things that you have done in your life that you look back on and you go, “How? Oh my god, how did I even do that?” They were because you were holding hands with monsters and unicorns at the time.

Identifying the Motivation Behind Your Successes

So then, let’s think about this with the next pause.

If you were able to adhere to a New Year’s resolution this year and it has gone successfully and continues to do so, and now that you’ve done the 30-day mark, you’re pretty sure this is set in stone, think about the why of it. What was the reason behind that action?

Okay, if you’re one of the lucky ones who actually did make a difference in your life, even if it’s a tiny one, you think, well, this was kind of trivial, but you know, I’m really glad I don’t do that. I’m really glad I decided not to always finish my plate even if I’m not hungry. I’m really glad that I eat slower or I’m more sensible or that I show up on time or what have you. You have just identified the monster andor unicorn that helped you. So, here’s a crazy thought. What if you could identify the monster and the unicorn before you know what action it’s modifying?

Finding Your Recurring Monsters and Unicorns

Because you will find with your monsters and unicorns, and again, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain for those who don’t like the mental image, but I love the mental image. Thank you very much. You’ll find that a certain unicorn keeps showing up. A certain monster keeps showing up. And they’re responsible for multiple things in your life. They’re responsible for multiple good things that you’re proud of. They’re responsible for multiple bad things that you’re not so thrilled with. Yeah. I tend to such and such. Right. Let’s do this. What What feeling or thing tends to make you look at the ground and go, “Yeah, I tend to da da da. It’s something I deal with.

Okay, let’s do the opposite. What thing do you do that you say, “Well, yeah, I really like such and such.” And it seems to affect things.

If you’ll notice, I was sort of vague with both of those things because again, monsters and unicorns can modify behavior in such a way as to make you do something that you are proud of or make you do something you’re not so proud of because neither is good, neither is bad. They are just programmatic features of the way our psyche works. You can get a lot of absolute joy in helping children or helping people learn or giving. You can get that same absolute joy in having a lot more ice cream than you should. Or deciding that dinner was delicious. I’m going to keep eating cuz oh my god, is this great and fun. Or it’s so much more fun to not work than to work. And again, the same is true for monsters. It can give you an absolutely terrible feeling to feel that you’re not being a good friend. But it can also give you an absolute terrible feeling to feel that you don’t want to work anymore. I don’t want to work anymore because working makes me feel like this. And that’s the same way it makes you feel when you’re a bad friend. What? Right? Because they’re neutral.

Clarity Through Identifying Your Drivers

I can’t stress enough, even though you may disagree, I can’t stress enough that these driving forces need to be identified in your life. And once they are identified, a lot of things will give you tremendous clarity. And I can tell you with my coaching system that I built, and it’s not just a system, but it’s a system the the I’m meaning a system as a way of doing things, but a system as a programatical thing I made online. So anyway, I’ve actually modified that system that has worked really well to include the concept of monsters and unicorns seeking pleasure and avoiding pain to make it a lot easier to help me to identify the paths and the ways for people to succeed.

You can do the same for yourself without involving me. If you want to involve me, that would be awesome. But you don’t have to involve me. You can do it yourself if you identify the monsters and the unicorns. And again, if you’ve had some failure with New Year’s resolutions and you’ve and you’ve said, “I made that New Year’s resolution this year again,” then you know that you’re targeting a behavior and not targeting the things that power the behavior. And power is really an uh apppropo word. All the energy to do a thing comes from that. Pleasure and pain generate energy. They can both generate the same amount of energy but in different ways and with different feels to it.

What Will You Do Differently?

So one last pause for us. So my question is now that we’ve discussed this and now that you’ve thought through your New Year’s resolutions and maybe you did indeed come up with one that really you hit a wall on knowing about the monsters and the unicorns, what will you do different to attack this issue?

Well, all righty then. I think we had a really good conversation this time. I really do. So, thank you as always for listening. Take a look at BeCAUSE! it’s a quick read and it makes a lot of sense. And um keep listening and if you think this was worth sharing, please do so. I would really appreciate that. And happy February.