How many of you have ever made a New Year’s resolution? Or how about that infamous resolution… “I’ll start going to the gym on Monday!” How many of you have successfully kept those commitments? In all probability only a small portion of you have.
Statistics show that many of us, just even a week or two after January first, are back to our old habits again. By the time February rolls around, only 64% of people who made New Year’s resolutions were still on the bandwagon. And more than half of people break their promises after six months – 46% of people keep their resolutions for six months or longer.*
And when we do fall most of us are likely to beat ourselves up, focusing on the negative of “I failed” instead of the positive like “I managed to change for six months.” It’s that negative thinking that takes us back to our old language and keeps us away from our choice of being happy no matter what.
When we make a firm commitment to be happy, fulfilled and satisfied with our whole life, as it really is, warts and all, we learn to accept ourselves are we truly are. We learn to focus on the positive and change our thinking.
As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu wrote:
If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.
So that is what we are doing. We are changing our mind and our thoughts. We are now choosing to be happy. We are choosing to break away from that birth language, those old lifelong conceptions and ideas imposed upon us since childhood. We’re letting go of old rules, believes and restrictions. We’re choosing to live a life of freedom and opportunity.
So does that mean we’ll be perfect out of the gate – looking at the statistics of how easily people keep New Year’s resolutions the likelihood is no. It’s more likely that we will stumble a bit on our journey to happiness but the beautiful part is we don’t have to give up in the process. We can continue to grow in our journey to happiness despite a few bumps and roadblocks we may encounter.
- What road blocks have you encountered in the past when you’ve tried to make changes?
- What will you do differently now to achieve happiness?
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