Resolutions. Really?

Hello, friends!  An exceedingly Happy New Year to you!

How are your 2015 resolutions coming along?  I’d love to hear about the things that you are going to focus on in 2015 and the things that are important to you.

Ah, yes.  I forgot.  New Year resolution-making isn’t terribly cool and trendy these days is it.  In fact, it seems to me it has become a thing to be ridiculed.  I’ve been pondering this the last few days – as the endless snide commentary has started galloping around the internet – because it never used to be that way.  It used to be that most everyone made resolutions, with enthusiasm and gusto and with a sense of hope and renewal.  Even in England! :-)

I have come to the conclusion that the problem with resolution-making is not the resolutions.  The problem is the modern disease of resolution mockery.  Resolution-making has become the star of innumerable memes and the butt of more jokes than there are marshmallow Peeps {***warning! this link could be extremely damaging to your health! proceed with caution!***} produced in America each year, which, according to the interwebs is over 700 million.  And boy ain’t that another blog post in the making.  Resolution-making, I offer, has been systematically reduced from a fine, noble and useful endeavor to the internet’s favorite winter comedy show.  It feels like more and more people are embarrassed to share that they have New Year resolutions, and an increasing number have just stopped making them.

Having spent several days thinking about why this might all be, I was left with the following thoughts:

• We fail to keep resolutions – in part – because the mockery has now conditioned us to believe that we will.  We’ve been told long enough and loud enough that everyone fails by mid-February – so we do.  It’s almost like we feel we need to do what the world expects us to do.  Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• No one likes to be mocked or ridiculed, so to avoid the onslaught of resolution ridicule we just don’t go there.
• Sharing of resolutions is often met with some form of “Uh huh, we’ll see how long THAT lasts.  Ha ha.”  Even from people who like us.  Weird.
• Those that mock seem to want others to fail.  Maybe this is because they have failed to keep resolutions themselves, so if they see others succeed they feel doubly failed.  Or maybe it’s because they don’t believe they can keep resolutions themselves, so they feel the need to bring others down.  Or maybe I am completely on the wrong track here, but I just don’t understand why people would want to ridicule the genuine efforts of those that want to improve themselves and their lives.

I don’t subscribe to any of that.  I love resolutions, and I think resolution-making at the start of each new year is a brilliant thing to do, and since I don’t write this blog in order to get more ‘likes’, nor do I give one fat flying squirrel what others think of me, I am going to openly encourage you to stand strong and show the world how magnificently successful resolution-making can be.

Let’s give the finger to the world of resolution ridiculers!  Let’s inspire others with our resolve and can-do attitude!  Let’s rock this resolution thing!

Data shows that people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.  10 times!  If you want to be a better version of yourself this year, make some resolutions that will get you there.

You got this.