I’ve always been a fan of New Year’s resolutions…. mostly for other people. I likely could benefit from starting better behaviors or stopping bad behaviors, however, I have done some research and found that only 8% of people actually keep their resolutions.
One of the reasons that so many resolutions fail, is exactly that….so many. Yes, people make too many, and are unable to focus on doing multiple things differently than before.
Why do people continue to make multiple resolutions? Perhaps because most of us have multiple things we would like to change about ourselves.
Why do we not prioritize and select the one really bad trait we would like to change? Possibly because that one trait is longest practiced, and therefore, the most difficult to alter. If that isn’t bad enough, you need to commit to changing it for an entire 365 days. I struggle to just commit to eat better for one day.
What do we know? We all have one or two undesirable behaviors, or areas where we could improve our lives. New Year’s resolutions are not the way to make this happen.
Therefore, I have decided to start a movement to make resolutions – not for a year, but….for a week. Yes, you only need to commit to start or stop doing something, for a mere seven days. Not only that, you can start this movement any time you want – no need to wait for the new year.
This approach has three benefits. First, it’s easier to commit to change for seven days than it is to commit to change for 365 days (unless it’s something like eat sweets). Second, by not being restricted to starting on January 1, you can jump in whenever you are feeling most motivated. And, finally, if you resolve to do something different each week, you’ll get to do a lot of different things – actually 52 different things as opposed to being pressured to identify the only one or two things you want to do for an entire year.
Since I’d spent the first half of the year contemplating this, it was time for my motivation to kick in. While this revelation did not exactly cause me to leap out of bed to start my resolutions, I did get out of bed, and determined what my first, one-week resolution would be.
