Resolutions...Do they work?

It is all you hear about these first days and weeks of the year, RESOLUTIONS.  It seems every news show is doing a segment on New Year's Resolutions and how to stick with them or how many people fail to succeed in keeping their resolutions past the first week!  So the question is with all this hype, do resolutions really work? Expert or not, I think we can all say with some experience under our belts that it is hard to make a drastic change in our lives without feeling the aftershocks of the impact.  If we resolve to do something we have never done before we have to make it enjoyable or it just feels hard instead of rewarding.  There is an adjustment period with anything that we do that takes us out of comfort zone, enthralls us with its newness and then the difficulty of it makes the magic fade within weeks. We all want things to be easy, but the truth of the matter is that nothing that is worth anything is ever easy.  

From working towards my Masters degree to raising my son, I wake every day and hope that this day will be easier than the last, but deep down I know that the day will be tough no matter what happens because my son and my education are both the worthy causes in my life.  I am also a true believe that the blood, sweat and tears are what makes accomplishments so satisfying.  If something was easy, I do not think I derive as much pride in my journey.  I truly have embraced the saying that it is the journey not the destination in 2009.  It is all the little steps we take throughout the journey that add up to the big accomplishments.  No elite athlete, no doctor, no parent I know has arrived at their destination nor have they not experienced heartache, disaster and hard work along the way.  Nothing in our lives is worth more than the things we work hard for - nothing!  So when we talk of resolutions, we have to realize they are difficult and they will test our mental and physical toughness, but we will arrive a smarter, tougher and happier person.

It is when we commit to changing irreversibly that we achieve our goals.  No one sets out to make a change and says, ‘I am going to do this for a while and then return to my old ways.’  We have to create irreversible change in our lives in order to reach our goals.