College: Living, Laughing and Learning

According to http://www.proactivechange.com/motivation/resolutions/research.htm,

40 to 45% of American adult make one or more resolutions each year.

Among the top new years resolutions are resolutions about weight loss, exercise, and stopping to smoke. Also popular are resolutions dealing with better money management / debt reduction.

The following shows how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:
- past the first week: 75%
- past 2 weeks: 71%
- after one month: 64%
- after 6 months: 46%

While a lot of people who make new years resolutions do break them, research shows that making resolutions is useful. People who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions:

New Year’s resolvers (sample = 159) and comparable nonresolvers interested in changing a problem later (sample = 123) were followed for six months via telephone interviews. Resolvers reported higher rates of success than nonresolvers; at six months, 46% of the resolvers were continuously successful compared to 4% of the nonresolvers.

What does all this mean?

Well, my thoughts on new year resolutions are that they should be used to identify what is important to a person. Goals are important. I don’t think new years resolutions should be impractical ideals, but more of a general guide to what a person can be doing to live a better life. These resolutions help you to organize your thoughts and continue to reevaluate your life.

I think that it is very important during college to assess how the past semester has been in every way - academically, socially, life contentment - and think of ways to make life more joyful and meaningful.

Happy New Year!!!