Research shows a staggering 63% of all New Year’s resolutions this year were broken inside the first 7 days of 2013.
Why do we do that to ourselves? When you unpack this I think there are a variety of ways you can look at it.
1) We don’t like how we finished 2012 and we WANT to do better, another thought is that and/or
2) Someone else didn’t like the way we finished 2012 and we NEED to do better, both are valid and realistic approaches.
I think when you really boil it down, deep down inside us the main reason we go through the rigors of setting New Year’s resolutions is that fascination with the word “NEW”. Think about the words that are associated is “NEW” for a minute. New and Exciting – New and Different – New and Improved – New and …….fill in the blank – we want what we see in our windshield to be different than what’s in the rear-view mirror, shoot we even call it the “New” Year as we head into Christmas with January 1st right behind.
New is Exciting, New is Different, New is often improved and it’s contagious – it’s just a matter of how you look at it and what you decide to do with it. For some “NEW” means “Change” and change isn’t always good. For others, “NEW” is just like our New Year’s resolution statistic, “oh it will run its course and we’ll be back to the old way before too long”.
