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My Take

Goals are better than resolutions

Mark McGee
Posted 1/8/22

I am not one for making resolutions. So many go into each new year making a list of resolutions so long they cannot all be kept. I am not in that category.  

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My Take

Goals are better than resolutions

Posted

I am not one for making resolutions. So many go into each new year making a list of resolutions so long they cannot all be kept. I am not in that category.  

Frankly, based on different studies most New Year’s resolutions last about one week before they are broken. Around 80 percent of resolutions fail, and most have gone by the wayside in February according to the magazine Inc.  

So many resolve to lose weight and to exercise more. Try to find unused equipment in many fitness clubs in January. Then wait to blow the dust off of them in March.  

When I decided to make goals, I had no idea I was thinking along the same lines as Tony Robbins, the life coach and motivational speaker. He urges his followers to set goals for the new year and not resolutions. He stresses goals usually have a plan behind them where resolutions are usually spur of the moment reactions to a new year ahead.  

Actually, resolutions for a new year date back to ancient times.  

What is the definition of a resolution? Basically, it is “a firm decision to do or not do something.” Many psychologists think people trying to live up to the definition of the word become frustrated and fail at the resolutions.  

Whether or not I will reach my goals is a big question as we complete the first week of the new year. But I am going to try.  

There are writing projects I want to complete or at least make significant progress towards finishing. There are personal traits I want to improve. There are places I want to visit. Like most people I don’t want to repeat much of 2021. I want a clean slate.  

I would like to think there are some sure things in life, but frankly there never really are any, except maybe Alabama and Georgia playing for the NCAA National Championship in football. That was a sure thing. Sorry about that Cincinnati and Michigan. But with so many things going on around us like unrest across the board and the always present pandemic, a sure thing is even more impossible to find.  

Certainly, I am not saying that because I am making goals instead of a resolution that I am on path to successful completion of them.  

My goals are few, but I think they could be interesting if I do complete them. In order to reach them I am going to have to make some changes in my life, some small, some not too small. Like most things in life, we need to be patient and take those baby steps.  

Setting goals instead of making resolutions gives you that option. For as the late, great Hall of Fame baseball player Yogi Berra, said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”