New Year's Resolutions

Oh yes, the day of reckoning is upon us. We have been saying we would start our new diet, contribute to a Roth IRA, look for a new job, start going to church again, stop drinking, stop smoking, and a whole host of other goals right after the holidays, January 1st to be exact. We have been using that as an excuse for an extra helping of gluttony for the last couple of weeks too. Might as well throw back one more ‘cause after the new year, no more. Puff on an extra Winston now as it is soon to be my last. An analytical person might say, if 99.9% of us don’t follow through anyhow, but we all double up on the "sins of the flesh" right before the big no-follow-through, then is the act of making goals worse on us than not making any in the first place?

I say no, and here’s why. In my experience, nothing seems to happen if it isn’t measured. For instance, if you didn’t have the goal of keeping that paycheck coming, who would go to work? Your work is measured every time you get a paycheck and the company allows you to walk back through those doors. If you exercise and don’t have the goal of working longer or harder, you would stop the instant you broke a sweat and that just leads to the monster Buddha belly that I currently sport. So the first step in doing anything is setting a goal. It is step number one, sorry, can’t be avoided.

So you’re a big ol’ fatty like me and have set the goal of dropping some poundage every year for the last 20, and like me, failed miserably. So what? Do it again. Increase your resolve and make this your year. When that doesn’t happen, make 2010 your year. One of these years has got to be your year, and if not, eventually you’ll be dead anyway and then you really won’t care, I promise.

Get your first check of 2009 and throw $20 in a savings account and see if you can keep it there for a day, then a week, then a year. Soon you could have as much as $100 stowed away for that rainy day…you know, the one that has pretty much dominated 2008 for anyone, in any job, anywhere.

If you need a specific calendar day to roll around to get you thinking about where you have been and where you want to go, that’s fine. At least there is something besides collection agencies and your need to move to elastic waist bands pushing you forward. If you don't have any goals, what is the point? So make some, super ambitions or not so much, but work toward something next year and see how you do. Self-reflection and goals are never bad things, unless, of course, your goal is to murder ten people this year to break your old record of nine.