Screw Your New Year’s Resolution: Do THIS Instead to Win at Life
Disclaimer: RIGHT NOW is ALWAYS a good time to try to make positive changes in your life. If you’ve psyched yourself up for the New Year and are feeling motivated to make changes to improve your life then by all means continue. This isn’t meant to discourage you in any way or give you an excuse to quit or fail. Regardless of the outcome from your New Year’s Resolutions this year try implementing the solution I propose below for better, more consistent results.
Same Shit, Different Year
It happens every year. In unison, they emerge from a hangover of Holiday excess with bloated waistlines and maxed out credit cards. An army of self-loathing and miserable mouth breathers springs forth from the woodwork to make public proclamations that in a few weeks will seem as though they were specifically crafted only to cause embarrassment among family, friends, and co-workers.
“This year is going to be different”, they say. “This is going to be the year I turn it all around”. They spend the next week telling anyone who will listen how they are going to lift weights, read more, lose weight, quit smoking, eat healthy, get out of debt, go back to school, find a better job, start a business, not act like such a complete knob all the time, or obtain any other myriad of noble and lofty aspirations this year.
A Parade Of Losers
By February 1st, over 90% of them have already given up and failed. All the other losers who gave up will welcome their failure too. They will feel relief as they are no longer threatened by prospect of seeing others attempt elevate their station in life while they stagnate. They will reserve quiet resentment or whisper among themselves about those who are sticking to it, reassuring one another that they too will quit soon and go back to just accepting their lot in life like they did.
Google says people are basically good. Bollox. Most people are basically petty, nasty, lazy, jealous, stupid, and self-serving. Don’t believe me? Try raising yourself up in any area sometime. Of course, everyone around you will encourage you at first. Take careful note of how people start treating you once you’re doing better than they are or start acquiring things they want for themselves. Some of them will even waste their time and energy trying to undermine you instead of focusing on the execution of their own opportunities.
Do yourself a favor and cut this sort of cancer out of your life immediately. Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. Surround yourself with people who will celebrate with you when you win. Always be genuinely happy for the successes enjoyed by other people and learn from them.
So Why Do They Almost Always Fail?
New Years Resolutions almost always fail because the whole thing is disingenuous to begin with. People only participate because they feel compelled by peer pressure to join in this mass ritual of proposed self-improvement.
Self-improvement is hard work. Every achievement is born out of effort, pain, sacrifice, discipline, and dedication. These people were never willing to pay the price to begin with. Most New Years Resolutioners are only daydreaming for a couple weeks about things they wish they could just have for free. Sorry kid, the universe just doesn’t work that way.
Do THIS Instead
I still make New Year’s Resolutions, I just don’t make them on New Year’s Day. Instead, I make my New Year’s Resolutions on October 18th. I do this every year, silently and of my own volition. It’s a process that involves only me.
Most people focus on their birthday as an opportunity to indulge in hedonistic behavior and demand tribute from others in the form of birthday presents. Instead of using my birthday as an excuse to congratulate myself for consuming oxygen for another 365 days in a row I use it as a day of reflection to gauge the direction of my life over the course of the last year, evaluate my progress, and set new goals.
I have absolutely crushed my goals every year since I started doing this. I figure out what I want, I accept what I’m going to have to do to get it (the price), and I immediately start executing a plan that moves me towards those goals on a daily basis.
Try it.
