48 of 50

Wishing you all a very happy New Year, and welcoming new subscribers who’ve signed up over the last couple of weeks.

It’s that time of year when some of us start making promises that we might or might not keep. The New Year’s Resolution seems to me to be the kind of promise that is just made to be broken after a bit. For years I made them, often they were similar each year – lose weight, get fit, etc., etc., – but more frequently they would fail at some point, quietly forgotten about until January 1st the following year.

I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions for over ten years. What’s the point? You can make a change at any time. I don’t think doing it on the first day of the year means that you are any more likely to succeed than making it at any other time. If anything my experience says you’re more likely to be successful if you make the decision when it’s right for you.

As you’ll know if you’ve read a few of these posts you’ll know I like to read, and I always like to read more if I can. That said I found having a target of reading X number of books a year to almost be a barrier to reading that many books. So a few years ago I set my target to just read one book and low and behold I read more books in that year than I’d ever read in any previous year and I’ve been pretty consistent. Even in a year when I’ve had a lot going on like this year I’ve still managed to read 80 books.

I’m not saying that this would work for everything, but if your aim is to do lots of something you only achieve that by doing it once and repeating it lots of times. Lose weight – well you need to lose one kilo and then repeat – admittedly that’s an oversimplification because ultimately your diet and exercise will also play a part in whether you can, and how fast you’ll lose that weight.

Over the years I’ve seen more people including myself fail at achieving a personal change when they set out to do than if they set out to do it at any other time of the year and I think this is because we’ve been conditioned to say that we are going to undertake x, y, z thing as a New Years Resolution when ultimately our heart isn’t in it, rather than achieve the exact same thing by doing it another time when we’re up for it.

What do you think – have you succeeded with your New Year’s Resolutions in the past and have you made any this year? Let me know in the comments, and thanks for reading.

We’re two posts away from the mythical Fifty, and I’m still thinking about what happens next. I’ll be writing more about it in due course in a separate not one of the fifty post.