You can forget about making New Year’s Resolutions if you’re 
hoping for a successful outcome.  Most aren’t worth the paper 
they’re written on.

No less than Mark Twain has written of New Year’s Resolutions, 
“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good 
resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as 
usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his 
last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and 
exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast 
our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient 
shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”

The biggest majority of New Year’s Resolutions have gone by the 
wayside before January is over and most won’t even be remembered 
six months later.  And the reason is pretty simple:  Most are 
made in response to something negative -- a habit or situation 
that the person wants to change or end.  And therein lies the 
problem – it’s hard to develop momentum from a negative response.
It is always easier to move toward something rather than away 
from something.

Consider one of the most adopted resolutions --- weight loss.  
No one can get excited about losing weight because it requires 
deprivation.  It’s a negative response to concerns about 
appearance, health, etc.  The results of weight loss Resolutions 
demonstrate their weakness.  A 1998 survey sponsored by 
Gardenburger found that more than three-fourths of all women 
between the ages of 25 and 54 make diet and weight-loss plans 
each year.   Nearly nine of 10 respondents reported only 
occasional or no success, while almost half lost little or 
actually gained weight instead.

The people who succeed at losing weight and maintaining the 
loss have usually been motivated by a dream much bigger and more 
positive than just losing weight.  They see themselves living a 
healthy lifestyle.  They begin to act and think like people who 
are in good physical shape.  There’s more of a radical change 
in a person’s thinking and actions than you see with most 
resolutions.  It wouldn’t be possible to effect and sustain such 
a radical change unless the person is motivated by a big dream 
that is positive in nature.

Another popular aim is to quit smoking.  And I can certainly 
relate to that -- I was a three-pack-a-day smoker until I 
celebrated a smoke-free New Year’s twelve years ago.  For over 
twenty years I had tried to quit many times using every tool 
and technique I heard about.  But as long as I was trying to 
quit, I couldn’t break the grip.  

Instead, I developed a dream to become a non-smoker.  I fell in 
love with the idea of breathing clean air instead of smoky air, 
of my body and clothes smelling nice instead of smoky.  I 
thought about how wonderful it would be to taste food again.  I 
decided to start acting and thinking like a non-smoker, and when 
the thinking took hold I simply quit smoking.  In all the years 
since, I’ve never wanted another cigarette, never even thought 
about wanting one. 

If you’re going to make a New Year’s Resolution this year, make 
one with a high probability for success.  Make a Resolution to 
develop a life plan.  Most people are in a free-fall through 
life, careening from one crisis to the next.  They wake up one 
day and 10, 20, 30 or more years have passed and they’re nowhere 
near where they thought or hoped they’d be.  Working with a life 
plan you’re much more apt to be excited by what the future 
brings even if you succeed at attaining only a small part of 
your plan.

A life plan should address all areas of your life including 
finances, health, relationships, career, spiritual and even 
recreational.  While a lot of our focus tends to be on financial 
issues like increasing income or decreasing debt, or health 
issues like losing weight or quitting smoking, the undeniable 
truth is that a life lived out of balance isn’t a life of 
quality at all.

If you were going to build a new house and you had this idea for 
a fabulous master bedroom suite, you wouldn’t rush out and start 
building the master bedroom.  You’d have a complete plan before 
you started.  When you approach resolutions and goals in the 
same manner, you end up with a much better chance of achieving 
success. 

Copyright © 2004 Vic Johnson

Vic Johnson is a popular motivational speaker, author and 
Internet Infopreneur who has created some of the most visited 
personal development sites on the Web, including the goal 
setting portal, http://www.Goals2005.com that features goal 
setting programs and software as well as weight loss, smoking 
cessation and debt reduction solutions.