"And as a man who unwills what he wills
Changing his plan for every little thought
Until he withdraws from any kind of start
So did I turn my mind on that dark verge
For thinking ate away the enterprise
So prompt in the beginning to set forth…"
The Divine Comedy, Canto 2
How many times have you made a resolution, only to realize a month later that you haven't followed through on your plans? Of course, there may be many good reasons why you were unable to do what you had decided to do: work got in the way, family obligations took away your free time, physical or health issues cropped up . . . all good excuses, to be sure.
But what Dante is referring to, and what I've found to be (in honest self-appraisal) the majority of unmet resolutions come from talking yourself out of it. I'll resolve to get in shape, for example, and almost immediately start an internal conversation to talk myself out of it. Trains of thought like, "I'll never be able to accomplish it and then will look foolish," and, "what if I begin next month when things settle down a bit," and, "there are some things I still have to accomplish before I can take something new on" -- Dante says these are ways to un-will what I've already willed and to fail to even begin; "thinking ate away the enterprise."
To live purposefully and in freedom, we've got to learn to attend to our internal thoughts, the conversations we have with ourselves and about which we're largely clueless. Only by identifying and confronting this internal self-talk can we hope to make progress. Otherwise, we never even make a start.