New Year's Resolution - How's That Working for You? (approx. 2½- 3 min. read)

It’s another new year and I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited about starting over because that’s kind of what it’s like; starting over. The clock strikes 12:01 AM January 1st, and it’s not just a new day, it’s a new year and some people like to make new year resolutions like losing or gaining a certain amount of weight, quitting smoking, starting a new workout schedule or doing random acts of kindness, but unfortunately, only about 8% actually succeed.

A lot of people make resolutions and out of those people, 25 % have forgotten about the promises they made to themselves or have fallen back into their old ways in the first thirty days. By the end of February, all but 8% of those people are still working on their aspirations and that’s really hard on the people that dropped out of the equation.

During the years that I used to make new year resolutions, I was one of those people and I made lots of resolutions, but in all that time; probably close to three decades the only resolution I’ve kept was to quit smoking. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great resolution, and probably one of the hardest, but in that time period, there were thirty (!!) new year’s eves for me to make changes to my life and I only managed to keep one of them. ONE, and it makes me feel like a failure!

I had all those years to work on becoming a better, healthier person and I feel like all I did was waste time and to me, time is more precious than anything else we have in this world, and I’ve got less time left than I care to admit, and even then I’m going by my age, so I may have even less time than I think. This was why I started making goals for myself a few years back instead and I make them throughout the year, so the only thing I’m promising myself on New Year’s Eve is to enjoy myself and have a good time.

Forbes agrees with me and believes that we have a better chance of achieving a goal because goals are less vague and more actionable than a resolution. This means that you can be more specific about a goal than a resolution because it can be broken down into smaller steps and that makes it more achievable. Breaking your goal down into steps will help you to stay better focused, because it won’t be as daunting a task, not only that it will be easier to keep track of your progress.

Last but certainly not least, when you’re making new goals throughout the year, be careful who you share them with because some people will make you doubt yourself and in the past, their actions have made me question myself and I end up giving up before I even get started. Share your ideas freely with the people that support you, but the people that don’t, hold off sharing your goals until they are well established. That way if they try to make you feel like you’re being overzealous, you can quickly dismiss their doubting natures with the facts.

What are your goals for the year?

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.

Links and Resources:

https://nypost.com/2018/12/21/new-years-resolutions-last-exactly-this-long/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashiraprossack1/2018/12/31/goals-not-resolutions/#180639b73879