New Year’s resolutions are stupid and unrealistic. I mean, let’s be serious. How many people do you know who make a New Year’s resolution and actually manage to keep it longer than a week or so? I, personally, cannot think of one. In fact, most people I know who have made New Year’s resolutions may have kept them through sundown … New Year’s Day. According to Forbes.com, only 8% of people who make New Year resolutions achieve them. How sad! If you’re one of those people, and it has worked for you, please share with me your story so that I can know the secret.

New Year resolutions come with a lot of stress and a zillion questions that don’t generate answers. Change is gradual and it doesn’t start just because you have made a resolution. New Year resolutions only succeed in getting a person depressed when they fall short. People become more conservative and less creative due to lack of flexible ideas.  By the way, how am I supposed to do the same thing without fail the whole year?

Can’t I just move on to something that I can be successful at? We can’t know in advance whether we will be able to keep that promise; there are so many things that can crop up in a year’s time that we can’t plan for - it is a difficult length of time to remember things for, it is an enormous weight on your morale to know that you have to do something that you find difficult again and again for the entire year.

If you rely on the idea of a fresh start in order to get things done, unless you have good willpower, you will lose all motivation to keep your resolutions once this initial rush is over. This mentality is what causes people to say ‘I’ll start tomorrow/next week’ but never really get around to doing anything because it is always too late or too early to start now or there is always plenty of time to spare before they need to start.Life is too short to be constrained by unrealistic resolutions. Instead of making resolutions, take the time to reflect on the year that has just passed. Think back to all the things you accomplished during the passing year and all the things you planned to accomplish but were unable to. Think back to the good times you had with friends and family and even those times that may not have been so memorable. Think back to where you were at the beginning of the year and where you are now.After that, look forward to the coming year; to accomplishing bigger and better things. And, most importantly, be thankful you can look forward towards the coming year without having to make resolutions.