subject: Why You Won't Achieve Your New Year's Resolutions [print this page] Author: Christopher L King Author: Christopher L King
Well, here we are; the year 2010. And now that the fireworks have disappeared from the midnight sky and the cheers of thousands of party-goers have dissipated, it's now time for us to get back to business. It's now time for us to work on achieving our new year's goals (resolutions).Surprisingly, I may be one of the few people in the world that still engage in the practice of setting new years resolutions. In a recent survey that I took on my website, over seventy percent of respondents stated that they don't set new years resolutions because they never achieve them. I guess if I kept falling short of my goals, I would stop setting them too. Besides, why would I want to set myself up for failure? I would much rather not have a bar to measure myself against than to continuously fall short of it. Unfortunately, this is many individuals' rationale. But worse, this quick statistic expresses one fact that may be even more disturbing. It illustrates the normalcy in failure and in our attitudes toward quitting. That's right. If 70 percent of individuals are accustomed to not achieving their goals and quitting, that means that only a mere 30 percent of us have been conditioned to achieving any kind of success. Can this be true? Can failure and quitting be normal? Yes, it can and it is.In my years of coaching and empowering others, I have come to realize one important rule: It is human nature to gravitate to those things that are pleasurable and flee from those things that are painful. Since childhood, we have welcomed the positive feelings from our pleasurable experiences and intentionally avoided the negative sentiments of those painful ones. Therefore, due to an increased failure rate, if we have experienced a series of negative feelings toward goal setting, we would naturally retreat from revisiting such mental, emotional, and sometime physical pain. But despite this fact, there is still a great portion of us that continue in our yearly goal setting rituals, only to fall short of our targets year after year.While it is rather presumptuous for those continued goal setters to operate under the assumption that they are better than those non-goal-setters, it's important to note that the reasons for their failure are quite similar to the reasons that the previous group have begun to discontinue the process of goal-setting all together. That's right. The reason that many individuals do not and will not achieve their new year's resolutions relate back to the all important previously stated rule: Humans move toward that which is pleasurable and run away from that which is painful.To achieve your new year's goals, you must endure a change process. Unfortunately, for many of us, change is a painful process. Sure, the end result looks very exciting; but the process of getting there can often be boring, frustrating, and stressful. Therefore, in an attempt to cope with the stresses of the change process, we simply disengage and quit. So, the primary reason that most individuals will not achieve their new year's resolutions is simply because they will get bored or frustrated with the process of change. However, by linking with a coach or an accountability partner, you will be able to develop a winning strategy for overcoming this common occurrence, thereby launching you from the depths of normalcy into the realms of extraordinary. About the Author:
Christopher L. King is a professional inspirational speaker, author, Certified Life Coach, and internet radio personality. He has dedicated his life to helping others take their lives to their greatest levels yet. Are you looking to take your life to the next level? Get your FREE excerpt of "The 3 V's to Success," and a FREE 30-minute personal coaching session at http://www.christopherLking.com
