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By Faith Hibbs-Clark, Casting Director, CMFA, LLC®, Acting Science Method™ creator
Why Humans Have Always Set New Year Goals — and Why Most of Them Fail
Every January, people promise themselves change.
They call them New Year’s resolutions — but the practice of marking the new year with intention is far older than modern planners, gym memberships, or productivity apps. In fact, humans have been doing this for thousands of years.
What has changed isn’t the instinct to set goals — it’s how we try to make them stick.
🏺 Ancient Beginnings: Renewal Before Results
The earliest recorded form of New Year goal-setting dates back to the Ancient Babylonians around 2000 BCE. During their 12-day Akitu festival, which celebrated the new year in mid-March, people made sacred vows — returning borrowed items, repaying debts, and restoring social order.
These were not “ambition goals.”They were identity commitments tied to renewal and belonging.
The goal wasn’t achievement.It was alignment.
🏛 Looking Back and Forward at the Same Time
When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in 46 BCE and established January 1 as the start of the year, the Romans dedicated the day to Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings.
Janus looked both backward and forward — a powerful symbol that still mirrors how we approach the New Year today:
reflecting on who we were
imagining who we want to become
The ritual of setting intentions wasn’t about force.It was about transition.
✝️ Reflection Over Resolution
Early Christian traditions deepened this reflective aspect. The New Year became a moment of moral inventory rather than celebration. In the 18th century, John Wesley formalized Covenant Renewal Services, where people recommitted themselves spiritually rather than socially.
Again, the emphasis was not productivity —it was self-examination and identity.
📜 When Goals Became Personal
By the medieval period, knights renewed vows of chivalry annually. By the 17th century, ordinary people were recording personal resolutions in diaries. What was once sacred and communal slowly became private and internal.
By the 19th and 20th centuries, New Year’s resolutions became fully secular:
health
finances
productivity
self-improvement
The meaning shifted — but the ritual remained.
🧠 Why the New Year Still Matters Psychologically
Modern psychology confirms what ancient cultures intuitively understood:time markers matter.
The New Year represents a mental boundary — a moment of closure and renewal. The brain naturally uses these transitions to re-evaluate identity and direction.
The problem isn’t that people set goals.
The problem is that most modern goal-setting ignores how the brain actually works.
🔑 From Resolutions to Identity
Ancient goal-setting rituals were rooted in identity, belonging, and renewal.
Modern resolutions often rely on willpower alone — which is why they collapse by February.
Sustainable change doesn’t come from trying harder.It comes from becoming your FUTURE SELF!
That’s where identity-based, neuroscience-informed goal setting changes everything.
And it’s why the instinct to set New Year goals has survived for over 4,000 years — even if our methods haven’t yet caught up with the science.
But now with my new book, The Science of Goal Setting for Actors, you can change that. You can align your identity with purpose.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Faith is a body language expert who specialized in deception detection before becoming a casting director and working in the film industry for over 25 years. She is the founder of the Communication Method for Actors, LLC® & the creator of the Acting Science Method™. www.cmfatraining.com
