New Year’s Resolutions That Work!

New Year’s Resolutions are mostly miserable failures! Every year we resolve that we will achieve impossible things, and every year we fail. Think back over the last year, and see if something like this happened:

January 1^st: I’m really fired up! This year I’ll blow the doors off all those New Year’s Resolutions!

January 31^st: Well, I didn’t meet all of them, but really did well on those I did meet. Next month I’ll catch up.

February 28^th: This was a short month – no wonder I fell short of my expectations. March will be better.

March 31^st: I thought it would be easy, but the weather didn’t cooperate and I’ve had a lot of extra things to do this year, it seems.

April 30^th: Maybe I was too ambitious. I’ll focus on just a few New Year’s resolutions.

July 1^st: Half the year gone. Perhaps I should revise my goals for this year downwards.

September 1^st: I don’t think I made any New Year’s resolutions this year, did I?

Sound familiar?

So what goes wrong that every year we fall so far short of where we intend to be? Is it our fault or is are we doing it wrong? Is there a better way?

Let’s take a look at the process we go through and see if it can be improved. As an example, imagine that during or after the holidays you take a look at the effects of all that food and drink and decide you are fatter that you would choose to be. So, like many others, you decide to lose weight next year.

Having learned how to set goals and how to word them, you declare a goal for your New Year’s Resolutions that might read something like:

“On or before December 31^st., I have reduced my weight by x lbs or more.