The Problem with New Year’s Resolutions

Abstract

Why don’t most people’s New Year’s resolutions lead to lasting change? The underlying message in most of our New Year’s resolutions is that there is something wrong and we better fix it or else… We are bombarded with the message that we should be better – not just that we could be happier or more effective if we chose to make a change – but that we must be better or else we are inferior, inadequate, and bad. How much time and energy do you spend fighting yourself and/or the universe? I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I should have gotten that contract. My spouse should do what I ask of him. Most of us are so steeped in our own rigid perceptions of what is acceptable that we refuse to see the world as it really is. And then we wonder why it is so hard to make a change