Yesterday, I mentioned the fact that less than 50% of Americans even set resolutions, and, out of those that do set them, only 15% ever accomplish them. In fact, one could say that the only resolution most people keep is to NOT keep their New Year's Resolutions. Are you ready to change all that? Good! First, let's deal with the problem of people not setting New Year's Resolutions.
Why People Do Not Set New Year's Resolutions
There are a variety of reasons why people don't set their resolutions. They may include:
They don't really know what they want.
I believe people know more what they want than they realize. Most people are complaining about something in life. If you are unhappy with a situation like being in debt, having too many bills to pay, being overweight or the house is always a mess then you obviously want the opposite of that situation. This means you want to pay off your debts, reduce your expenses or increase your income, exercise more and lose weight, and establish a better organization system in your home or teach your kids/spouse/yourself to put things away and develop better and/or more consistent cleaning habits. So what is it that you want?
They are too busy or disorganized to set them.
These are the people that say they will set their resolutions when they get around to it. I can understand this because I have been guilty of using this reason myself. The one thing I have going for me is that my birthday falls on February 5 and I tend to look back on the past year of my life at this point as well. I have often realized that another year has passed without much improvement or accomplishment in the areas I wanted to improve or accomplish in. Sometimes I set resolutions for My New Year of Life at this point. Other times, I am still to busy. Most people, I imagine, just never get around to it at all. If you don't take the time to make plans to improve your life right now, why would you expect tomorrow or the next day to be any different?
They feel overwhelmed when they set them.
Some people feel like it has to be all or nothing. They must change everything they don't like about their life right now or why should they bother. So they set as many resolutions as they can think of ... and then never achieve anything because they are torn in so many different directions. That would be like throwing the "Hail Mary" pass in football on every play. You will never win that way. Just like a sequence of well-executed football plays that eat up a little bit of yardage at a time can result in big wins, a small number of resolutions (or even just one at a time) will ultimately result in massive life improvements if done consistently.
Another type of overwhelm, aside from having too much to work on, can be not knowing where to start. This is very similar to not knowing what you want in that most people really do know where to start. They just don't acknowledge it. If you want to lose weight, it isn't a question of which exercise would be most beneficial for you, it is a question of establishing a consistent, daily exercise habit and see what works best for you. Most people seem to think that life is Ready! Aim! Fire! when most successful people in any area of life have learned that it really is Ready! Fire! Aim! Ready means knowing what you want, Fire means taking action on it, and Aim means adjusting your course of action based on the results you get.
FEAR
This can mean fear of failure, fear of rejection or fear of the unknown. We are creatures of comfort and habit. We create our "comfort zone" and are very reluctant to venture outside of it. Setting a resolution for anything means change and change means venturing outside your current "comfort zone." For most people, the only time they expand their "comfort zone" is when it has become too constricting to be comfortable anymore. What people do not realize is that we can never truly leave our "comfort zone." The borders are flexible; not rigid. They allow us to push out, and, if we stay out there long enough, the border expands to that point so we are no longer pushing. It is like Mark Twain said: "Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."
They are too content with just "getting by"
These are the people who do not truly understand the importance and power of resolutions. They don't feel that changing their life is important. The truth of the matter is that things that do not change, adapt and improve DIE! Just think how different your life would be if you were in the same state that you were in when you entered this world:
--- You would starve because you never learned to feed yourself.
--- You would be immobilized because you never learned to crawl or walk.
--- You would be uneducated because you never learned to read or write or even think for yourself.
Now you may say that is ridiculous, but so is thinking that just "getting by" is a good state to remain in. Life is about change, growth, development and improvement. Setting a resolution is the first step to making those changes and improvements a reality.
The most common reason you may hear from people who do not set resolutions is most likely to be:
WRONG!!! You just never learned how to do it effectively! A resolution is a tool for life improvement. Like any tool, you must learn how to use it properly for it to work. That will be our focus in the next couple of days.
Those are a few of the reasons, or more accurately named - EXCUSES, that people give for not setting New Year's Resolutions. Maybe some of those sound familiar to you due to your own experience. If so, I hope I have shared some information that will encourage you to never use those excuses again. Now, let me leave you with a few of the benefits of setting resolutions. You may have gleaned some of your own from the paragraphs above, but here are a few more:
Reasons to Set New Year's Resolutions
Resolutions give you a target to aim for!
As I mentioned earlier, life is about changing, growing, progressing and developing. Resolutions enable you to set the direction for that growth. It not only gives your conscious mind something to focus on, but, if done properly, also puts your subconscious mind to work, which helps you accomplish your resolutions much, much faster.
Resolutions help you concentrate your time and effort!
Some people of us trudge through every single day wishing for something better. Then in the quiet of the evening, when the voices of discontent clamor the loudest, we drown them out through the use of television, narcotics and alcohol. When you have a resolution, you are able to focus on the way things will be when you are done instead of the unhappy state of things as they are now. You have an objective to focus on and to plan your days' activities by.
Resolutions provide motivation, persistence and desire!
My wife and I were talking about the reasons why we don't work on our resolutions as often as we should. One thing we both realized is that we don't want to work on them when we consistently don't work on them. But when are working on our resolutions and achieving those small daily victories, our emotions are saying, "Yeah, baby! Hit me again! I want some more of that!" The motivation, persistence and desire come in the doing and the doing comes from having a resolution to shoot for.
Resolutions help you establish priorities!
How many of you have gone to bed at night feeling like you should have accomplished more that day. The house needed cleaned up, you needed to work on your home-based business, you should have exercised, the house needed to be cleaned up, you wanted to write for your blog that day, or you should have spent more time with your kids and/or your significant other. But, instead, you chose to relax in front of the T.V., and now it is too late to do anything. I know I have been guilty of that on many occasions. Resolutions enable you to set down what is important in your life. And, if you choose to work on them before the relaxing (or at least add time to relax to your daily schedule and keep to that time limit so you can work on your resolutions), then your life will improve by leaps and bounds.
Just don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that your priorities are set in stone for the whole year. There are times when your circumstance will change unexpectedly (and sometimes not so unexpectedly) that will require a rearrangement of your priorities.
For example, you may have set the resolution to practice the guitar for one hour every day to get better at playing it. Once your wife has the baby though, you can no longer practice at home because it wakes the baby or your wife who is getting so little sleep as it is. You may have to change the priority to taking the baby for an hour while you are at home so the misses can get some rest and settle for a half hour practice at work as part of your lunch break.
Or perhaps the expectant mother had planned to walk every day to stay in shape and keep her weight gain down during her pregnancy. Now the doctor has put her on bed rest with two months to go. As frustrating as this may be, it would be foolish, not to mention dangerous, to violate the doctor's orders. It would be better to for her to make her and the baby's health the priority by following the doctor's orders and temporarily postponing the exercise and weight loss resolution until after the baby is born and the doctor has given the O.K. to continue.
Resolutions provide a road map from where you are to where you want to be!
When you set your resolutions you not only know where your life is going but you also have a plan for how to get there. It may only be a partial plan to get you started and head you in the right direction, but, just like driving in the dark where your headlights illuminate only so many feet in front of you, the rest of the road will appear before you as you travel. And there will be times when the Construction Detours of Life will force you to take a different road than you had planned. But, just as if you had to take a detour on the way to work, you don't just throw your hands in the air and say, "That's it! They closed my road! I'm not going in to work today or not even until the road re-opens!" You would simply re-route your journey so that you still arrive at your destination.
So those are just a few major reasons why resolutions are so important and beneficial for each and every one of us. If you think of some others, please share them in the comments section below so that we all may benefit from your insights.
Celebrate 2008! will continue tomorrow in Part 3 as we talk about how to set powerful resolutions that stick!
No comments:
Post a Comment