The New Year represents a new beginning; a time to re-think, re-organize, and start over with a clean slate. And as 2013 came to a close, people all across the country were looking back at the year in retrospect.
- What was accomplished?
- What goals were met?
- What resolutions did they keep?
- What relationships were established?
- Are they sitting better financially than they were a year ago?
And a lot of people find themselves disappointed that they aren’t where they would like to be – financially, physically, materially, spiritually, or even emotionally. Why not? Because their 2013 New Year’s resolutions fell by the way side by mid January; as did their 2012 New Year’s resolutions; and their 2011 New Year’s resolutions; and their 2010 New Year’s resolutions.
The word resolution means “decided; firmness of purpose.” So when we make a New Year’s resolution, we are making a firm decision to accomplish something specific in the new year. But by February, it’s no longer a new year. We have settled into another year, and even though it’s still quite early in the year, it is now considered an old year. Nobody makes old year resolutions. What’s the phrase? Out with the old and in with the new. So we look at the year whizzing by…February, March, April…and as we look forward to summer approaching, we realize that we left our New Year’s Resolution back on January 15th, if it made it that far. Most of us left it around the 3rd or 4th. That means that our New Year’s resolution wasn’t a firm decision at all, but more like a short-lived fantasy.
So what’s the solution? Should you renew your New Year’s resolution? Who ever heard of making a New Year’s resolution in July? And if you wait until the new year and try it again, you’ve wasted the entire year. So for the great majority of folks, New Year’s resolutions don’t work well. Yet the month of January is an ideal time to re-think, re-organize, and start over with a clean slate. It’s a good time to set goals, make plans, and organize a way to follow through with them. If my New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, that’s a good goal, but it will never happen without a plan. And most resolutions fail because there is no plan in place.
Instead of making a resolution, why not commit yourself to setting goals. Goals may take longer to organize and arrange; and plans to achieve those goals definitely take longer to formulate. But it gives you something to work toward and your results are measurable. By March or April, you can look back and see how you’ve progressed toward your goal. But if you’ve allowed things to slide and you look back in June and realize that you haven’t worked toward your goal since February, it’s easy at that point to renew your commitment to your goal and start moving forward again. You can reset goals and renew a commitment anytime during the year or you can decide, probably for the first time in your life, that you are going to make a mid-year resolution.