A time-honored custom is to make New Year’s resolutions, decisions to use the new beginning offered by the new year to improve one’s life in some way. Reportedly, 50% of people make such resolutions, but 89% fail to keep them.
This can be seen as evidence for the theological teaching about the bondage of the will. But though moral self-improvement is largely fruitless, apart from the Gospel, are there are other kinds of resolutions (exercise, eat better, or keep a tidier desk [my goal year after futile year] that are worth making and might be realized? (Though such non-moral resolutions fail too: I’m told that new gym memberships soar at the first of the year, but that attendance plummets after just a few weeks.)
Have any of you actually kept a New Year’s resolution for the whole year or longer? How did you manage that? After the jump, some advice for doing so.
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