Why good intentions so often fail

Every year around the turn of the year, we make all kinds of resolutions. To take more rest. To stress less. To live more healthily. This is why gyms fill up with new members every January. Yet every year, many people notice the same thing: it only works for a short while, that resolution… or not at all. Not because you are not motivated, and not because you do not know what you want to change. So why does it not work? Almost always because good intentions do not fail due to a lack of willpower, but because of old habits and unconscious patterns. In this blog, you can read which insights from psychology and the Clarity Process give your good intentions a better chance.Why motivation alone is not enoughFrom psychological theories, we know that our behaviour is largely driven by habits. Think of:

• automatically reaching for your phone,
• solving things yourself instead of asking for help, or
• procrastinating while you know perfectly well what you need to do.

These habits arise because our brain likes to save energy. What is familiar feels safe. What is repeated often becomes automatic. And that is what takes the least effort = less energy.

The Habit Loop model (by Charles Duhigg) offers insight into how to make your intentions more likely to succeed. It shows that every habit consists of three elements:

1. the cue or trigger, a situation, emotion or moment,
2. the routine, the automatic behaviour, and
3. the reward, the often emotional payoff.

Many good intentions are based on motivation to change a routine: “This year I will really do things differently.” But they forget to look at the trigger and the reward. And that is where things go wrong.

After every retreat, I resolve to work a little less intensively at the office. Not necessarily fewer hours, but with more short micro-breaks in between, just to catch my breath. Yet precisely when my agenda is full (the cue/trigger), I automatically start working even harder (my routine), because that gives my mind a sense of regaining control (the reward). My intention to take micro-breaks therefore, only works if I remain aware of the busy moments at work. Well before the pressure can trigger me, I need to pause and see that there is already enough control, and that this reward is not actually needed. Only then can I consciously allow myself those micro-breaks.

Good intentions therefore, require conscious, new behaviour, while our brain is programmed to fall back on what is familiar. Especially when things become tense, busy, emotional or tiring. Psychology refers to this as the difference between intention and automatic behaviour. Your intention lives in your conscious mind. Your habits live deeper, often outside your direct awareness, in your subconscious. And that is exactly where the Clarity Process touches on something essential.

According to the Clarity Process, our subconscious can be compared to an iceberg. The tip, what you think, decide and resolve, is small (less than 1%). The large, invisible part under the water (more than 99%) consists of old beliefs, childhood conclusions, conditioning and stored experiences. This vast subconscious has one important task: keeping you safe, based on what it knows. Even if that means you continue to please others, make yourself small, work too hard, or repeatedly cross your own boundaries. Good intentions therefore fail because they collide with that invisible part of the iceberg. You want to move forward, but that large mass automatically and subtly keeps steering you back onto the same familiar path.

Many people respond to this by trying even harder: more discipline, stricter rules, higher expectations of themselves. But this often only increases the inner struggle. Because as long as an old, unconscious story is active, every good intention will feel like swimming against the current. The Clarity Process therefore does not focus on forcing new behaviour, but on seeing through old patterns.

Maybe good intentions this year do not need to be about doing more, improving yourself, or being stricter. Maybe they can be about becoming curious about your own patterns, looking gently at what keeps returning, and gaining clarity about what unconsciously drives you.
This exercise takes five minutes and requires no discipline. Choose one good intention you have, or had. Close your eyes for a moment and ask yourself the following questions, without needing to solve anything.

1. What do I do automatically now that clashes with this, for example procrastinating, adapting or overworking?
2. When does this behaviour mainly occur, during stress, fatigue, busyness or insecurity?
3. What does this old behaviour give me, rest, control, safety or a sense of belonging?
4. Which sentence or belief fits with this, for example “I have to do it on my own”, “Rest is not safe”, or “If I say no, I will lose something”?
5. Write that sentence down and then read it back slowly. Then gently ask yourself: “Is this really true, or an old story?”

You do not need to change anything. Simply seeing it is enough. That is clarity.

At Riant Coaching, I guide people precisely in this process. Not by managing behaviour, but by bringing insight to where things truly get stuck. Because once you see what keeps pushing you in the same direction, movement often arises surprisingly naturally. And then good intentions turn out not to be a struggle, but a natural result of clarity.