New Year’s resolutions are as old as time, but that doesn’t mean they’re very effective.
About billions usually make New Year’s resolutions, and another 50 million sometimes do, according to research by the University of Michigan.
The same research says most can of us stick it out a few weeks, but after six months fewer than half are still going. Only 8% of us are actually successful. Some industries even count on us giving up. Fitness centers, for instance, sell year-long contracts knowing most of us won’t actually show up more than a few times. Their business model depends on most members getting distracted, overwhelmed, or uninterested.
This is about much more than numbers, of course. It’s about people’s dreams. Most New Year’s resolutions are about health, wealth, relationships, or personal development. In other words, they’re about the kind of things that matter most to us.
I’m sure you have your own personal stories of starting the New Year strong only to get busy, fall behind, and eventually lose motivation. It’s happened to me. And it’s exactly why I don’t bother making New Year’s resolutions anymore, at least not the usual kind.
How to make resolutions that really stick
Some dreams are just too important to entrust to a faulty system. Instead, I utilize a proven goal-setting process that incorporates safeguards for many of the things that cause typical resolutions to fail. It’s taken me years to develop this process, and I’ve seen it work not only in my own life, but also in the lives of countless people with whom I’ve shared it.
Some people will say that the best way to make our resolutions stick is to only pick one or two for the year. But that’s leaving too much on the table for me, and probably a lot of you too. We’re talking about the things that matter most, right? Why leave so many things undone and miss so many opportunities to grow? Instead of cutting back, we just need to bone up on a system that actually works.
Life’s too short for typical New Year’s resolutions that are almost guaranteed to fail. It’s time to make progress toward the things that matter most.
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