New Year, a Whole New You? (Spoiler: probably not). Or: Why behavioural environment eats your intentions for breakfast

Despite what endless think pieces and LinkedIn posts try to tell us, you probably can’t create a whole “New You”, on January 1^st. (My apologies).

The good news is that you probably don’t need to, to elevate the impact of your intentions, goals and purpose into effective action. It’s not a huge spoiler to say that none of us who work in transformation, change or behavioural science can magic you into an idealised version of yourself (sorry). But what we can do, which I think is more compelling, is help you create a more effective trajectory for your – and our collective - work, purpose, and wellbeing, this year.

New 2026 Curiosity Incubator | Accelerator for Good T shirts - if enough of you believe hard enough, they will be magicked into reality (ie let me know if you want one and if enough people do, I will order some!)

2026 word of the year: Resilience

It takes no perspicacity at all to predict that 2026 is going to see the acceleration of 2025’s themes of disruption, uncertainty, and the core need for resilience building, in ourselves, our communities, our teams, organisations, and society as a whole. As uncertainty and disruption accelerates, resilience – personal, familial, community-led, structural, societal, in meaning and evidence – gains in importance and urgency. The good news is – there is science for this!

We just don’t tend to use it in how we design and create things, from our streets to our shopping carts to our entire economic and social structures. But we could.

Quick anecdote:

Each time I teach behavioural science 101, or do any form of transformation work that is workshop-based, I spend a meticulously planned, plotted, and, dare I say it, well-presented and very much evidence-based learning-resplendent 90 minutes+ - which has some clear central takeaways, including:

• Motivation (or willpower; or individual attributes like discipline etc) alone doesn’t cut it, no matter what the sales bumf says. In the COM-B model, it’s Capability, Opportunity and Motivation equals desired Behaviour, not Motivation alone

• Intention / Action Gap - our intentions don’t always match our actions – they fall into the gap in between – and there are multiple reasons for this that aren’t about our individual strength of character  

• Behavioural environment eats intentions for breakfast - and individual strengths, attributes, even values: if you really want to enact change, change the environment (physical, resource, social), not the person

COM-B (Susan Michie and the UCL team - very much looking forward to the new 2.0 version launching next year); and the pervasive, steep Intention / Action Gap of legend. Here be dragons!

And invariably, when we get to the sharing back of solutions or the wider Q&A, someone (and it’s usually the first person who raises their hand) confidently presents us with an answer that boils down to “people need better individual motivation” (usually, a financial incentive – which we've also just learned about: in that it's not always the most or only effective tool in the box).

It’s curious: but why is this One Simple Trick (That Incidentally We’ve Just Learned Isn’t the Case) as the go-to answer, or the go-to type of answer that people are looking for, so enduring?

I think it’s partially the Hero’s Journey quandary: what works really well in Hollywood films (where one person’s extraordinary gifts and strength of character overcome any obstacle, up to and including the laws of physics); or indeed product sales, where all your problems will be solved by this one handy product, yours for just 9.99 –  just doesn’t work to address complex challenges that exist in reality.

And needing the One Simple Trick to be the answer erodes our resilience and our ability to identify and stick with the multifaceted and difficult process of how we build solutions for complex challenges.

What do we do instead?

If I could wish for one thing to launch us into 2026 – the year of Resilience Building – it would be that we all develop the kick in the pit of our stomach that comes from the ‘Really? How?’ instinctive critique of these kinds of “One Simple Trick” one-shot solutions, when we hear them. Like an embodied side eye, where our whole self, when presented with a One Simple Trick, thinks “Well, maybe? But how would that work?”.

Here's a handy graphic of the top critical thinking prompt for 2026. May we all have full-body, missed step 'but how though?' moments when confronted by One Simple Tricks in the wild

So every time someone presents us with a new shiny thing that will 100% work, the pit of your stomach kicks like a very small, missed step and you immediately ask: “Sounds great - how?”. And then a million follow up questions until you feel like you can say whether it’s a kernel of something useful, or BS. That is my Behavioural Fairy Godmother wish for 2026.

Building a New Approach (rather than New You) in 2026:

• Problem identification: what is it we’re really trying to do here? Understanding the reality of the problem, knowing we all carry a pre-disposed set of viewpoints about what is going on that probably aren’t fully accurate or the whole picture

• Add some “collective” to your problem identification – get other people’s viewpoints and informed takes even if you don’t think they are right (and: not everyone is ‘right’ – opinions aren’t evidence, though opinions are potential way-showers)

• How would you know if something changed? If this, then – what?

• What solutions are other people already trying? Why are they working or how could they work better? What failed, and why? What worked, and why?

• Environment, not individual: it’s more effective for behaviour change to change elements of the environment than rely on individual motivation or intention alone

• Try some stuff out: Some things you can change yourself, so try it in a low-risk way, with a learning approach, not success/failure, as the frame for your mini-experiment

• People aren’t data, and behaviours aren’t “individual” at scale: moving from viewing people as data points that can be intervened upon, to understanding the complexity of the environments we have designed for ourselves (physical, social, resource, process environments)

• Accountability and social support helps: One of the best ways to change a behaviour of your own, and stick to it, once you’ve decided what it is and how you’re going to do it (do you have the COM for the B of COM-B?) is to create social accountability for follow through, in your social sphere, at work, etc. Get yourself an Accountabili-buddy!

Happy New Year, and in 2026, may we all be more sceptical of One Simple Tricks, and more adept at weaving together collective resilience. Onwards!

Want to take this further? See more on our upcoming Curiosity Incubator | Accelerator for Good programme starting end of Feb 2026 if you want to join us to find out how to make this a reality for you and your work!