Below are some reasons why your New Year’s Resolution could be bullshit. 1. You did not specify it. You’ve made a broad resolution, and now you’re clueless where to start and what to do to keep it. Popular examples of these resolutions are to lose weight, to be a better person, and to become rich this year. So what you gonna do to achieve them? Suggestion: Make your resolution more specific. For example instead of just saying you want to lose weight, you can change it to losing ___ lbs this year by running an accumulated ___km every month of the year and maintaining the diet recommended by your coach. 2. You’ve made an impossible-to-keep resolution. You’re expecting magic or a miracle to happen. You’ve made an unrealistic resolution that is beyond your current capabilities. One example of this kind of resolution is to travel around the world even if you currently don’t have the resources to accomplish it within the year. Suggestion: Make it more achievable. Instead of jumping to travel around the world, choose a few or a single place where you can possibly visit according to your availability of time, money, and other resources. If you have not yet explored the beautiful places in your locality, then it would be more sensible to visit them than traveling many places abroad. 3. You don’t have any idea how to measure and track it. Your resolution is not assessable, and you have no idea how you will know if you are succeeding or not in a given period of time, amount of money, and exerted effort. Suggestion: Make your resolution measurable and trackable. For example, if your resolution is to lose weight, specify how much pounds you want to lose each week or month, how much hours and days of the week you will allocate in your workout, and how much money you will spend each month for your diet, coach or trainer, fitness gears, and other expenses. 4. You’re only doing it for yourself. Your resolution is based on your boastfulness and pride. In other words, you’ve just made it for your own vanity. An example of this resolution is to lose weight so that you’ll look slimmer in your selfies. Does it sound foolish, selfish, or both? Suggestion: Put more depth and sense in your resolution. Make it something that is very important, not only for your life, but also for the lives of the people you love. Instead of having a resolution to lose weight so that you’ll look slimmer in your self portraits, you can revise it to something like having a healthier and stronger body so that you can work more productively and provide a brighter future for your family. If you’re a believer, you may also dedicate your health resolution to give glory to God. This is actually effective, especially if you’re a God-fearing person who wants to serve as a role model of self-discipline and inspire other people. 5. You’ve made it for the sake of celebrating the New Year tradition. Your New Year’s resolution is literally only valid on the New Year’s Day. In other words, you’ve just made it for the sake of January 1′s celebration. Then you’ll forget it after a few days. Worthless, isn’t it? Suggestion: Do a research and take note that a New Year’s Resolution is not only kept on January 1, but is kept until the year ends. Remember that! 6. You did not look at your past resolutions. You did not learn your lessons from your failed resolutions in the previous years, and you keep on copying that failed resolution over and over again. You’ve made losing weight your New Year’s Resolution for 10 straight years, and you’d never lose any weight at all after a decade, rather, you’ve gained weight. That’s honestly ridiculous! Suggestion: Learn from your mistakes in the past. It’s time to change your style and habit for 10 years. Get a more serious and a smarter New Year’s Resolution. 7. You chose it just because it’s the trend. Your resolution is only copied from other people. You like it because it’s one of the hottest New Year’s Resolutions last year. However, you don’t have any idea how to keep it. You just want to announce that to your friends so that you’ll look cool for having that popular resolution. Suggestion: Make your New Year’s Resolution more personal. It doesn’t matter whether it’s popular or not. What matters is that you’ll keep and accomplish it throughout the year. 8. You’re ashamed of it. You are afraid that other people will know your resolution because you are embarrassed about it. You want to keep it to yourself so that if you fail to keep it, no one will learn about your failure and no one will make you feel guilty other than yourself. Suggestion. Most people who succeed in their resolutions are those who get support from other people (i.e., friends, family, and mentors). Hence, create a New Year’s Resolution which you could be confident of and which you can get support from other people. 9. You’ve made a lot of conflicting resolutions. Probably you are very excited to start the New Year with a bang that you carelessly choose a lot of resolutions to make sure that your life will change this year. The problem is that your multiple resolutions are opposing each other. For example, your resolutions are… to earn a Master’s Degree, to work more hours in your business to generate more revenue, and to spend more time with your family. Can you spot the problem with those resolutions? It’s conflict of time, did you get it right? Suggestion. Decide what’s the best thing you want to do or the worst thing you want to stop doing this year. Choose one New Year’s Resolution that you can keep at your best instead of choosing multiple resolutions that will only make you frustrated at the end of the year because of your failure to keep them all. Anyway, if you can successfully keep one good resolution during the year, you will naturally achieve other related life improvements during that year. 10. You’re expecting to break it. Should I explain this bullshit further? Suggestion: Make a SMARTEST (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound, enthusiastic, scrutinized and tested) New Year’s Resolution that you can cling on, stand for, and fight for, not only for one year, but even for the rest of your life. Happy New Year and have the best results in your life!