Forget New Year's Resolutions -- They Don't Work
By Vic Johnson
You can forget about making New Year’s Resolutions if you’re hoping for a
successful outcome. Most aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.
No less than Mark Twain has written of New Year’s Resolutions, “Now is
the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week
you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked
his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are
a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast
our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings
considerably shorter than ever.”
The biggest majority of New Year’s Resolutions have gone by the wayside
before January is over and most won’t even be remembered six months later.
And the reason is pretty simple: Most are made in response to something
negative -- a habit or situation that the person wants to change or end. And
therein lies the problem – it’s hard to develop momentum from a negative
response. It is always easier to move toward something rather than away from
something.
Consider one of the most adopted resolutions --- weight loss. No one can
get excited about losing weight because it requires deprivation. It’s a
negative response to concerns about appearance, health, etc. The results of
weight loss Resolutions demonstrate their weakness. A 1998 survey sponsored
by Gardenburger found that more than three-fourths of all women between the
ages of 25 and 54 make diet and weight-loss plans each year. Nearly nine of
10 respondents reported only occasional or no success, while almost half
lost little or actually gained weight instead.
The people who succeed at losing weight and maintaining the loss have
usually been motivated by a dream much bigger and more positive than just
losing weight. They see themselves living a healthy lifestyle. They begin to
act and think like people who are in good physical shape. There’s more of a
radical change in a person’s thinking and actions than you see with most
resolutions. It wouldn’t be possible to effect and sustain such a radical
change unless the person is motivated by a big dream that is positive in
nature.
Another popular aim is to quit smoking. And I can certainly relate to
that -- I was a three-pack-a-day smoker until I celebrated a smoke-free New
Year’s twelve years ago. For over twenty years I had tried to quit many
times using every tool and technique I heard about. But as long as I was
trying to quit, I couldn’t break the grip.
Instead, I developed a dream to become a non-smoker. I fell in love with
the idea of breathing clean air instead of smoky air, of my body and clothes
smelling nice instead of smoky. I thought about how wonderful it would be to
taste food again. I decided to start acting and thinking like a non-smoker,
and when the thinking took hold I simply quit smoking. In all the years
since, I’ve never wanted another cigarette, never even thought about wanting
one.
If you’re going to make a New Year’s Resolution this year, make one with
a high probability for success. Make a Resolution to develop a life plan.
Most people are in a free-fall through life, careening from one crisis to
the next. They wake up one day and 10, 20, 30 or more years have passed and
they’re nowhere near where they thought or hoped they’d be. Working with a
life plan you’re much more apt to be excited by what the future brings even
if you succeed at attaining only a small part of your plan.
A life plan should address all areas of your life including finances,
health, relationships, career, spiritual and even recreational. While a lot
of our focus tends to be on financial issues like increasing income or
decreasing debt, or health issues like losing weight or quitting smoking,
the undeniable truth is that a life lived out of balance isn’t a life of
quality at all.
If you were going to build a new house and you had this idea for a
fabulous master bedroom suite, you wouldn’t rush out and start building the
master bedroom. You’d have a complete plan before you started. When you
approach resolutions and goals in the same manner, you end up with a much
better chance of achieving success.
Copyright © 2004 Vic Johnson
Vic Johnson is a popular motivational speaker, author and Internet
Infopreneur who has created some of the most visited personal development
sites on the Web, including the goal setting portal,
http://www.Goals2005.com
that features goal setting programs and software as well as weight loss,
smoking cessation and debt reduction solutions.
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