The resolution you aren't going to keep this year
With the end of the holiday season and the beginning of spring classes upon us, the Student Activity Center will be filled to the brink as students try to adhere to their 2015 New Years Resolutions.
For those regular gyms rats who dread the influx of patrons each year, hold tight. You'll have your favorite machines back within a matter of weeks as resolve falters and people begin to let their goals slip.
According to a report released by the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, only 8 percent of the people who make resolutions each year actually go on to achieve them. The top three New Years Resolutions in 2014 were to lose weight, to get organized and to save more or spend less.
The problem people seem to overlook each and every year is that the tradition of New Years Resolutions creates pressure to devise grand and impressive goals for oneself which ultimately, because they are too elaborate or impossible to keep up with, fail long before 2016.
That promise to drop two sizes, give up your weekly trip to Pint Night or to attend church every single Sunday seems admirable at first. As time passes, however, the magnitude and difficulty of the task becomes clear. Soon, excuses begin emerging as to why your life-changing, long-overdue resolution is really not all that important after all.
Rather than fall victim to the annual sequence of promise and excitement quickly followed by discouragement and defeat, let this be the year to break the cycle.
Make a smaller, more realistic resolution to follow in 2015. While it might not seem as grand or admirable as some of your friends' goals, your confidence will be boosted as you are able to adhere to it as, one by one, your acquaintances realize they bit off more than they could chew.
Another mistake people sometimes make when January rolls around is choosing more than one resolution to follow. One completely unrealistic goal is hard enough to follow without adding two or three others on top of it.
By choosing one simple goal or several smaller ones, you set yourself up for success rather than failure. While attending church once a month rather than every week, or attending only one Pint Night a month rather than cutting them out entirely, might not seem as impressive, the end result will be an entire year of forming a new, healthy habit without the frustration that comes with trying to maintain a difficult resolution.
They key to forming a simple, successful resolution this year is to be honest with yourself first and foremost. The first step to avoiding another unrealistic goal is to admit which goals you can realistically achieve without getting frustrated or disappointed.
So this year, take stock of what you want for yourself and what you are willing to achieve. Best of luck to those sticking with elaborate resolutions, and best of luck to the gym enthusiasts waiting for them to clear the weight room.
