The next most popular thing to do in our culture this time of year, aside from the top ten lists is to make New Year Resolutions.  In the next few days, I’m going to post some blog posts to give you, what hopefully will be, some new insight on how to make New Year Resolution and whether or not it’s even worth making them.

Lets start out with the 10 most common New Year Resolutions and why people won’t succeed.  Next we’ll get into greater details of why people fail at their resolutions and we’ll finish up with three steps to making successful resolutions.

Top 10 Most Common New Year Resolutions are:

1. Exercise more
2. Lose weight
3. Stop smoking
4. Stick to a budget
5. Save or earn more money
6. Find a better job
7. Become more organized
8. Stop procrastinating
9. Be more patient at work/with others
10. Eat healthier

Looking at the top 10 most common New Year Resolution it’s apparent that we, those of us who make resolutions, do so with a goal in mind.  There is something we wish to be, accomplish, change or obtain.  However, what most of us do is arbitrarily set our resolutions based on our shortfalls or a desired outcome and end result in mind.

For example, the resolution to lose weigh…if you have never learned to eat healthy; you don’t know how to read food labels, you don’t understand what your body needs and how your body uses food/calories – how do you plan to be successful with your resolution?

So to no surprise, a few weeks (for some it’s just a few days and a selected few it might be months) into the New Year, we renounce our resolutions and surrender ourselves to the way things are and have always been.  Here are 10 reasons why:

Top 10 Most Common Reasons Why People Will Not Succeed:

1. Made the WRONG resolution
2. Made a resolution for someone else
3. Lack of support
4. Lack of a genuine commitment
5. Lack of motivation
6. Lack of passion towards the resolution(s)
7. Insufficient resources
8. Inappropriate intentions
9. Little to no accountability
10. Lack of a plan for success

Hmmm…that means that every year we have a tradition that technically sets up for failure?  Or is it our lack of knowledge, understanding, planning and beliefs in regards to our resolutions that sets us up for failure, not the resolutions.