This is me

In high school and college I went to the gym a lot.  I would always find it annoying at the beginning of the year to see an influx of people at the gym making it take almost double the amount of time to finish my workout.  After two or three weeks, it would go back to normal (which was both relieving and humorous at the same time) thus proving my theory of New Years Syndrome.  People expect drastic changes without the necessary effort.

I find a lot of people give up on their ideas, goals, and dreams very easily.  This isn’t necessarily pessimistic.  It’s harder than one would think to lose weight (to continue on the analogy I started the post with), save enough money to take a much needed vacation, find a significant other, get a new job, quit smoking, read a book a week, habitually write a blog, or make your hobby your occupation (not implying I need any of these).  Planning and executing on these things takes a certain caliber of person.  This person is dedicated as well as must make sacrifices and make time (sleep, personal relationships, and work are usually the first to slip).

By nature, people try to maintain habits, so when you try to introduce something new, you need to try even harder to break your current habits and create a whole new pattern.  One of my oldest and bests friends was a drug addict.  Every couple times I saw him, I would ask him, “do you abstain from drugs because you think you shouldn’t take them or because you actually don’t need them?”  It took him about 10 months for him to answer with the latter response (after relapsing once early on).  I’m not trying to say that executing on your “New Years Resolutions” are on the same par as staying sober, but rather than breaking your old daily habits to make time for the new takes more than telling yourself once on January 1 that you wish you could ________.

The other thing is that NYR are often completely unrealistic.  There is a HUGE difference between long and short term (and even defining long and short can be a debate in and of itself).  Expecting to lose 20 pounds, get a movie deal, be featured in an art gallery, own a restaurant, or sell out Bowery Ballroom without proper understanding of what that means is naive, ignorant, and irrational.  People need to learn to be their own Project Manager, so they can plan better.  There will always be a certain level of doubt along the way, but the risk is always the scariest or can be the most exciting if you trust yourself.  All this is easier said than done, but that goes without saying.  This isn’t easy, which goes towards my main point to begin with.

So it’s 2012.  What do you want to do different?  What are you going to do to make constructive steps towards making sure that begins to come to reality at a realistic pace…and making sure you stick with it.