Legal Research

"How to Keep a New Year's Resolution"

This post was written by Penelope Trunk: "I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions. We know that people keep less than 5% of New Year's resolutions, and I think a big reason for this is that anything we are trying to change in our lives is really about self-discipline.

I realized this after spending two years reading what positive psychologists have discovered makes people happy. And, it turns out, that everything we know about what makes us happy comes down to having self-discipline to do what we know want to be doing.

So of course making a New Year's resolutions doesn't work, because it's the act of saying, "I want to make a change, but I'm not going to do it now. I'm going to do it in January." That's not self-discipline, that's procrastination, right?

If you want to make a change in your life, you can start right now, with something that is not that hard to change.

1. Start small...

2. Think in increments of three weeks...

3. Get the wording right...

4. Visualize what you will look like...

5. Forget New Year's day. Start now..."

The full text of this interesting post and the active link are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist, 29 December 2009

© 2009 Penelope Trunk, All Rights Reserved

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on January 06, 2010 (boomark / email).