As we approach the New Year—and indeed—the new decade, it’s that time for all of us to make our annual resolutions whatever they may be. I hate to burst your bubble if you haven’t already figured this out, but New Year’s resolutions are whole load of crap! By all means have them if you like, and any worthwhile goal is always to be applauded—but aside from the fact that research shows there’s an over 90 percent chance that your resolution will fail very quickly, the very notion of a sudden personal change that comes about every year on January 1st, is problematic in itself. Why? Simply because when it comes to any goal of self-improvement, the power of subtle steady change is far greater than the power of a sudden forced change. If you desire success, a far better and more effective thing to do on any sort of mission of personal growth, is to identify 3-5 areas of your life that you want to develop. Write them down. These could be areas like your social skills, knowledge base, fitness levels—or even something like the ability to stay calm under pressure. Then strive to work on these areas on a consistent basis, with daily and weekly challenges, improvements, and reflections. Very small achievements and successes are just fine, as long as they are happening regularly.
You may have heard the famous saying by psychologist Jordan Peterson: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today”. Rather than a sudden resolution every year which fails very fast, if you simply become someone who is making steady improvements in key areas of your life, and keep looking back to who you were 6 months or a year ago, knowing that you’re on an upwards curve getting better and better—then you Sir or Madam, may well become unstoppable!
Happy New Year, thanks for reading my blog, and wishing you all the best for the new decade.
Suneel Dhand is a physician, writer and speaker. He is Co-Founder at DocsDox.
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You’ve got a point! Every year we make new year resolutions and most times failt to follow through. Subtle change sounds like s better idea. Happy year 2020 to you as well!
So true !