Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions

Have you ever wondered what the Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions are? Well, according to a recent survey, here they are:

1. Spend More Time with Friends and Family
2. Improve Your Fitness
3. Lose Weight
4. Quit Smoking
5. Enjoy Life More
6. Quit Drinking
7. Get Out of Debt
8. Learn Something New
9. Help Others
10. Get Organized

Now, these are all nice resolutions, but did you know that 22% of people give up on their resolution in the first week? Actually, more than half of us will have abandoned our “resolutions” by the end of March. I guess we’re just not very “resolute.”

Perhaps it’s because we tend to make several resolutions, and in the end, they overwhelm us. Since I’m a professional consultant, I thought I’d help “resolve” this dilemma once and for all.

Let’s look at the Top Ten Resolutions to see how we might consolidate them to make them more achievable.

The first one, “Spend More Time with Friends and Family,” seems reasonable enough, so I think we should try to keep it.

The second and third resolutions, “Improve Your Fitness” and “Lose Weight” both make sense as well. However, they seem somewhat similar. If you “Improve Your Fitness,” you’re probably going to “Lose Weight,” so let’s just combined them into “Improve Your Fitness.” Already, we’re making progress!

Numbers 4 and 6 also seem to be a bit similar: “Quit Smoking” and “Quit Drinking.” If these two make your Top Ten Resolutions, you’re probably not very “fit” either. If we just merge these into “Improve Your Fitness,” we’ve already eliminated three resolutions.

The seventh resolution, “Get Out of Debt,” seems apropos for the times. We may not even need to take this one off the list if we can get Congress to agree to include us in the bailout. But wait a minute! The next one is “Learn Something New.” You know, if we learned not to spend more than we can afford, we wouldn’t need to “Get Out of Debt” because we wouldn’t BE in debt. Great! Let’s just go with “Learn Something New,” and now were down to six.

Numbers 9 and 10 have some synergy as well. If we “Get Organized,” we’ll have more time to “Help Others.” Since resolving to “Help Others” seems to have the greater potential between the two, let’s just stay with “Help Others” and assume we’ll “Get Organized” to do it.

That leaves us with five resolutions, which is certainly more “doable” than ten. We’ve got:

1. “Spend More Time with Friends and Family”
2. “Improve Your Fitness”
3. “Learn Something New”
4. “Help Others” … and one we haven’t talked about …
5. “Enjoy Life More.”

Now, that’s what I call progress!

What else can we do?

Well, it seems to me that if you “Spend More Time with Friends and Family,” you’re undoubtedly going to have more opportunities to “Help Others.” Similarly, if you “Improve Your Fitness,” you can live longer … and if you live longer, you’ve got more time to “Learn Something New.” But, hey … you’ve also got more time to “Spend with Friends and Family” and to “Help Others.” So, maybe “being fit” is the real key. That leaves with just two!

I guess it’s time to look at the last one: “Enjoy Life More.” That one seems a bit nebulous to me. What does it mean? Well, for one, we’d probably “Enjoy Life More” if we spent more time with our friends and families. I guess the same would be true if we improved our fitness, lost some weight, quit smoking (if we smoked in the first place), and quit drinking (if drinking was threatening our health or the health of others). Come to think of it, we’d probably “Enjoy Life More” if we weren’t in debt and were able to learn something new. The same could be said if we found a way to consistently help others and to organize our own lives in a way that would relieve some of our stress.

So there you have it. You really don’t have to try to stick with ten resolutions, when you only have to concentrate on one. So, as we enter into the New Year, I offer this sage advice: commit to only one resolution.

“Enjoy Life More!


2009 (c) Dr. Terry O'Hara. All Rights Reserved.