Why Resolutions Don’t Work

I used to make New Years resolutions. I did it every year, and I can’t remember a single one that did not fail. They would work for a while, maybe even a few months, then I would slowly stop doing whatever the new good habit was, or resume the bad one again. Even worse, I would never start at all.

The problem with resolutions is the timing of them. They reside in the future and I do not have to worry about them until the future arrives. I am free to continue my life without them, despite the fact that the resolution would probably make me a better person.

This is why I have begun making goals and starting them immediately. Not the following day, or the upcoming week. Not in a few hours or a few months. Not next year, on the glorified January first. I start them now, because now is the only time that matters.

It’s easy to set a goal for the future. Anyone can and everyone does. We are reminded every year when we go to the gym in January and there are dozens of new faces. It’s reinforced when those faces disappear slowly in February and March.

Be the person who starts now, and who makes their goals stick. Don’t start a goal for the long-term if you do not have the power in you to continue on forever. Start small and use your success to build with. Each accomplishment, every completed attempt at anything, manifests into the building blocks of a person’s overall successes.

For example, I always start a new goal by telling myself I will try it for just one week. But I have to follow my plan without excuse for the entire week. After that week I am free to give it up if I find I no longer want to do it or if it is not providing a positive return on investment. This is how I started daily vlogging, and I now have over two-hundred videos on my YouTube channel. It’s also how I started getting fit by doing one-hundred push-ups every day–and I have since increased it to three-hundred. Start small and do not force yourself to go big if you don’t want to. The results will speak for themselves and probably make you want to continue.

This is not to say that I don’t sometimes lose my way. I lied a bit about the three-hundred push-ups. During my month back in America I stopped doing them almost completely–there were a total of five days that I managed to do one-hundred. And it shows.

The important thing is getting back at it. I am going to resume my push-ups now. Promise.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this blog and read every article; I can’t begin to express how much it means to me. I will continue weekly blogs and daily vlogs in 2017, and there will be some other surprises coming also. Have an excellent 2017. Don’t make resolutions, make goals.