Try a different approach to the New Year

Have you quit making New Year’s resolutions because you are tired of failing?

You have started dozens of diets on Jan. 2 and before the end of the month you have resumed your former pattern of eating, perhaps even gaining a few pounds.

You have vowed that on New Year’s Day you will quit smoking – this time for good. By the end of the first week you are so uptight and difficult to live with that your friends, family, and co-workers are almost hoping you will relapse and start smoking again.

Instead, maybe you decided not to deprive yourself of something, but instead to add to your quality of life…you would regularly save money for your retirement…be more friendly to your neighbors…or become a better manager of your time. You had every intentional of keeping your resolution, but before the first trees began to bud in the spring, you have forgotten your resolve.


Perhaps you should forget about New Year’s resolutions altogether and instead set aside some time to take an inventory of your lifestyle. Give yourself a checkup.

Start off not by asking how life is treating you, but how you are treating life? Are you punishing those around you because of chronic self-pity, self-centered thinking, or feelings that the past has trapped you into a vicious cycle from which you can never escape? Are you beating yourself up with anger and depression resulting in abuse of your body, some examples of which are overeating, substance abuse, keeping irregular hours, or being over-committed to work? Are you approaching life by trying to escape it because of pain and your perception of inability to cope? If you can answer with a no to most of those questions, you may give yourself a pat on the back as your self-inventory is primarily positive.

Individuals with a healthy self-esteem and a positive outlook on life may simply need to invest some time and energy in learning about priorities, goal setting, and increased self-awareness. They are often not the ones who find themselves making resolutions that fail over and over.

If you answered yes to the questions above, do you frequently struggle with self-doubt, find it difficult to follow though on desired goals, and have difficult with unplanned obstacles? Do you have little understanding or acceptance of the concept of delayed gratification?

Major changes in health, physical appearance, or career success are often greatly assisted by a review of how and why you treat life the way you do. Your motivation to change coupled with some insight into how you perceive the world around you is the basis for healthy change.

How we treat life is choice. Those decisions result in our perception of how life treats us. Making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking, or managing time more wisely will not work unless we correct the irrational and erroneous perceptions we have.