by Patrick Tay

Created on: December 12, 2008   Last Updated: December 15, 2008

This writer is among the individuals who almost never achieve most if not all of his New Year's resolutions that I have set for myself, until I realise the technique of fulfilling them.

When it comes to New Year's resolution, most of us have our eyes fixated on the task of coming up with the right New Year's resolutions. It almost seems that we will be able to fulfill these resolutions merely by wording the words and sentence(s) correctly, which is usually not the case, thereby resulting in unsuccessful attempts and wasted effort. This is not resume-writing. And there are some of us who have a tendency to compromise our New Year's resolution in order to make it easier for us to fulfill them. For instance, getting a grade B' for our English test seems easier to achieve than our "A", yes? This technique is workable but unhealthy, nevertheless. Penning New Year's resolutions should not involve compromise and negotiation.

And there are some of us who understands that procrastination is the primary cause of us not achieving our New Year's resolution, and have thereby made steps to achieve their New Year's resolutions within the shortest time possible. I feel that this is not workable as well, since expediting a process usually adversely affects the outcome. For instance, we can lose five kilograms of weight within two weeks instead of two months but imagine what damage this is causing our body (assuming we intend to achieve this through rigorous and strenuous exercise)? More often than not, speed does not guarantee quality. In fact, speed often compromises it. Writing New Year's resolutions is not a competition. When it comes to New Year's resolutions, we not only want to achieve it but to do it well and to do it right, right?

So, if well-structured sentences, making compromises and expediting the process do not work, what will when it comes to penning New Year's resolutions?

If we want healthy New Year's resolution, our mindset must be right. We must be disciplined and ensure that all resolutions that we make must not cause harm to ourselves, others and the world. It will be ideal if our resolutions work towards the betterment of mankind.

If we want our New Year's resolutions to be successful, we must do something that we have a strong desire to do. This is very important. Most of us will probably be successful in writing New Year's resolutions but many of us will probably be unsuccessful and fail in our endeavours. Why? Because we do not have a strong desire to do what we set out to do.

Therefore, it's the desire in us to achieve something that makes a difference between success and failure when it comes to fulfilling New Year's resolutions, and not merely procrastination.

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