It’s 2014! You know what that means… New Year’s Resolutions all around. After all, an new year can bring a new you, right? Maybe not. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind people who make resolutions, and I don’t hate the idea of them, but in all honesty, who actually manages to stick with them throughout the next year?
In the past, whenever I tried to make a new year’s resolution, it never really went well and I ending up not doing it. Try as I might to keep my resolutions, I always ended up breaking them one way or another. As a result, I just stopped making them. In hindsight, this was likely because I wasn’t yet ready to keep the goal.
According to this article, 45 per cent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but 25 per cent of them give up on their resolutions by the second week of January. Stats on this site also show only eight per cent of people in a study done were successful at achieving their resolution.
So why have so many people in the past, including me, fail to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions? I think it just has to do with the difference between what we expect and what we actually end up doing. We expect to accomplish our goals, but eventually give up on it because we’re not committed enough to actually do it.
If you are going to make a resolution to do something, than make sure you have at least plan it out first. Just saying you’re going to do something doesn’t mean that you actually will be able to do it. It would be short-sighted to say that you have a resolution to do and not have some sort of a plan to maintain it. Like Audrey said in her article, goals should be made when you’re ready to make them, not because you’re supposed to just because it’s the start of a new year. If you do have a goal in mind that you are determined to keep this year, follow Rebecca’s CAT principle, Commitment, Ambitious, and Timely.
As for me, I’ll make a goal that I want to accomplish when I know I can actually plan it out and achieve it. Until then, I won’t be making any New Year’s resolutions any time soon.
