It’s getting to be that time. No matter the New Years celebrations you experience, people are starting to think about resolutions for 2015. If you do a Google search for “top New Year’s resolutions,” you tend to come across a pretty standard group of ideas that people purpose to do with the starting of a new year. Setting resolutions like this have both positive and negative outcomes. This last year, when cleaning out some of the clutter in one of my drawers, I came across the list of resolutions I wrote down for 2009. I felt a huge burden of frustration when I looked at the goals I set for myself 6 years ago and realized that I had accomplished less than half of them and had continued each and every year to set the same resolutions – only to fail over and over again. Because of that smack in the face, I decided NOT to set New Year’s Resolutions for 2015. I have some general things I want to accomplish, but I’ve never had a lot of success with resolutions in the past. Despite my individual track record, though, I realize there are pros and cons for this particular practice.
Pros
They can get you set on a good path for success in the coming year
They can help you stay focused on a list of specific tasks
Writing them down and sharing with others can help you stay accountable for your hopes and dreams
Cons
You can get discouraged if you don’t see enough success
Goals that are either too general or too specific can be hard to achieve
It’s easy to set resolutions “because everyone does,” and not because you’re actually planning to commit
However, we have some suggestions to help those New Year’s resolutions really stick!
