How resolute are your resolutions?

A new year, a new me! That is what everyone will be hoping for as the year draws to an end. Everywhere, people are already talking of New Year resolutions in anticipation of the coming year. The intention is always very high and positive at the initial stage of trying to put together the resolutions, […]

A new year, a new me! That is what everyone will be hoping for as the year draws to an end. Everywhere, people are already talking of New Year resolutions in anticipation of the coming year. The intention is always very high and positive at the initial stage of trying to put together the resolutions, but after a week or two, these resolutions start to wane. Why this happens is still a question that most people cannot find themselves answering.

There is always talk about making a New Year resolution and about not keeping them a month or two down the road. What is it about the word “resolution” that sets people up to fail? The dictionary says, “The state or quality of being resolute”; when you look up resolute, you find “not hesitating or wavering.”

For thousands of years in many civilisations from the Sumerians to the Romans, people have wanted to start the New Year off on the right foot. Symbolically speaking, January 1st is a powerful time to ask important questions about one’s life:  it is a time to sit and reflect on the past year and see if there are areas where we can improve on or habits we could drop for a better and more fulfilled us.  

It’s a tie to see if one is happy with the direction his life is going, if one’s health, personal habits, relationship, financial picture or the size of one’s ecological footprint could be improved upon in general. The basic fact for making a resolution is to change from who we were before to being better in life. The big question now is how resolute can we be in sticking to our resolutions?

Everyone desires change, which is why we all make resolutions. When the struggle to keep the resolution becomes a challenge, one needs to remember why one made the promise in the first place. The reason is that one wants to see oneself in a different place at the end of the year and even beyond than one was at the beginning.

The frequent failure of New Year resolutions is simply a reflection of the difficult challenges we set for ourselves, he suggested. “People are making resolutions about things that are difficult for them to do, so it’s not surprising that many would fail,” Ahmed says. We all make New Year resolutions all for the fun of it or because others are making resolutions but never think of how we intend to stick to or even make the resolutions work. Most times, we set difficult and taxing resolutions for ourselves that we know we can never stick to.

This habit, to be resolute, cannot be acquired overnight. But it can be imbibed in us and developed. It is fuelled by self-confidence and geared up by courage. However, resolution by itself is no guarantee to success. Self-confidence, self-esteem, self-regard and strong resolution separate leaders from ordinary souls. Some people argue that all relative matters must be given enough consideration before taking the final plunge. But a person with strong mentality will always give priority to positive aspects and then all capacities, factors and forces will automatically push the resolution ahead.

‘Being resolute’ is not the implication of being reckless or desperate. Resolution means taking a firm decision; to bite off more than you are sure you can chew. New Year resolutions are much more than trite or utterly pragmatic promises made on an arbitrary day; making New Year resolutions tie us to a larger and more encompassing view of life.

But how much ability do we really have to change our behaviour and character? After all, popular wisdom seems to indicate that most New Year resolutions will fail. Many of us have also given up on even making New Year resolutions or specific life goals in general, often because of past failed experiences with taking charge of change in our lives. This is likely the reason that there are so many jokes about New Year resolutions with a “gallows humour” quality about them.

We make resolutions to change our behaviour, change our attitudes, develop new skills or knowledge and do new things. Yet very few of us actually follow through and succeed with these promises to ourselves. This failure to fulfil self-commitments usually makes us to feel worse, less capable and more powerless over our lives.

It’s a time to look at what we have done and what we are committed to making, a difference, a time to look back and ahead and to reflect upon the state of our lives. It is also important we keep our resolutions realistic, small and achievable; hoping that we’ll reach a resolute conclusion in our resolutions to accomplish our New Year resolutions or some other significant change that is of importance to us in our lives. Good luck and may our dreams come true in 2010!