Best Friends Might Sabotage New Years Resolutions

V I TA L S M A R T S R E S E A R C H

TIPS for ACHIEVING GOALS

Take an honest inventory of friends and
accomplices. Are your close friends and
family accomplices or active supporters?
What activities do you do together? Who
models, encourages, or enables your bad
habit? Who could you spend more time
with who would do the opposite?
Convert or push back accomplices.
Sincerely share your goals with those
who are impeding progress. Ask for their
support and help with changing your
behavior. In extreme cases, distance
yourself from those people whose actions
draw you back to your old habits.
Surround yourself with supporters. Find
as many active supporters as you can. Turn
passive supporters into active supporters.
Ask these friends to hold you accountable
for your behavior and provide coaching and
encouragement when you succeed.
Be aware of distant acquaintances. Its
fine if distant acquaintances share your
bad habit, so long as they dont actively
oppose your efforts to change. If they
do, avoid them until you have your habit
under control.

ABOUT THE RESEARCH. The study

collected responses via an online survey of
3,475 individuals in November of 2009. Margin
of error is approximately 3%.

LEARN NEW SKILLS. To learn how

Influencer Training can help you change
personal habits and meet your goals, visit
www.vitalsmarts.com or call 1.800.449.5989.

70 percent have a
personal habit they have wanted to change for at
least one year, and 22 percent have a personal
habit they have wanted to change for more than ten
years.
According to our study of more than 3,400 people,

However, 50 percent said that, in

the last six months, they have made
only a small amount of progress in
changing this habit. Whats more,
only 1.35 percent had made a very
significant amount of progress in the
last six months.
In addition, more than 50 percent
who are trying to achieve a personal
goal have one or more active
accomplicessomeone who
enables their bad habit or impedes
their success. This 50 percent are
significantly less likely to succeed at
changing their bad habits.

KEY RESULTS

70%

have a habit they have

wanted to change for at least one year

22%

have a habit they have

wanted to change for more than ten years

50%

said that, in the last six

months, they have made only a small amount
of progress

50%

have one or more active

accomplicessomeone who enables their bad
habit or impedes their success

According to the research, those who

surround themselves with friends who
actively encourage or support their
People are up to
more likely to
efforts to change are up to 38 percent
achieve goals if they surround themselves with
more likely to succeed at keeping
others who actively support their efforts
resolutions, breaking bad habits, and
achieving goals. The trick is knowing
who to spend time with and who
to ignore as you try to accomplish your goals. While the number of friends you include in your
network is important, an even more important factor to success is who you exclude.

38%

An innovator in corporate training and leadership development, VitalSmarts combines three decades
of original research with 50 years of the best social science thinking to help leaders and organizations
change human behavior and achieve new levels of performance. VitalSmarts has identified four highleverage skill sets that, when used in combination, create healthy corporate cultures. These skills are
taught in the Companys award-winning training programs and New York Times bestselling books of the
same titles: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. VitalSmarts
has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and trained more than one million people
worldwide. www.vitalsmarts.com