New Year's Resolutions

How many times have you made a resolution, only to find yourself not being able to live up to your own standards and/or expectations?

Here are a few techniques to use to make sure you are not a failure this year - at least as far as resolutions are concerned.  If you are destined to be a failure in life I can't help you, sorry.

Don't set the bar too high.

Perfect

If you really want to guarantee you'll be able to accomplish your goals, then make them easy.  Not eating fast food for the first week of the year is a lot better than saying you won't eat it at all for the entire year.  If you want to challenge yourself, at least make the goal reasonable.  Try to not to eat fast food at all for the entire year between the hours of 3 AM and 6 AM.

Increase your odds.

If you only set one goal then you have to achieve that goal to feel good.  Give yourself many opportunities to succeed.  Having at least eight resolutions, some of which should be able to get done with no work on your end, should enable you to achieve at least one.  If you really are an overachiever, shoot for completing 50% of them, but make sure at least half of them are easy.

Rely on others.

Make a resolution to do something better than someone else, or put yourself in competition with them.  Find someone who has recently filed for bankruptcy and make your goal to have a better credit score than them at the end of the year.  If you know someone confined to a wheelchair, make a resolution that you'll take the stairs more often that they will.  It might seem a bit harsh, but as long as you are the only one who knows your goal, it won't matter.  I still think it's probably best NOT to mention this goal to the handicapped person, just to be safe.  

Make your goals flexible.

The most popular resolution has to deal with weight loss.  Give yourself a chance to win no matter what happens!  If you lose 10 pounds, you win since you lost weight.  HOORAY!!  Go get a cheeseburger!  If you maintain your weight you still win because everyone knows muscle weighs more than fat.   Another cheeseburger!  Since you've been working out (again, give yourself a loose definition here) you might gain weight since you'll be turning fat into muscle.  Get two cheeseburgers for this since you'll need calories to burn during your workouts!! 
 
Make the resolutions non-quantifiable.

These are the easiest ones to achieve.  Saying you want to be nicer to door-to-door salesmen this year is a good one.  Resolving to eat out less than in prior years is one you can lie to yourself about, and since nobody tracks how often they eat out, you can do this easily.  Even if you end up eating out more often, just tell yourself you ate less food, more frequently, so you still win. 

Set up next year.

If all else fails, you still have the rest of the year to totally screw up so that next year's resolutions are easier to achieve.  Don't workout, so you can vow to work out more.  Start bouncing checks so you can work on not doing that next year.  The possibilities are endless.

If you can't fail yourself, encourage others to fail for you so you can beat them.

I'd love to hear some of your tips for making and keeping resolutions.  I'd also love to hear what your resolutions are so I can throw them in your face later in the year encourage you to succeed.  Actually, I'd just love to hear comments in general, so feel free to comment away.

My resolution is to get more comments and followers than I did last year.  If I fail, it's not because I did anything wrong, it's because you all did.

That's the third lesson from above.  See how easy that is?