December 2022 is here. Towards the end of the month, people become reflective and inevitability turn towards the next year with idea to set personal goals and resolutions. Estimates vary depending on the year and scope of the study, but research into New Year’s resolutions has generally found that fewer than 10 percent of people who make resolutions each year stay the course until they’ve accomplished their goal. In fact, a 2020 poll conducted by OnePoll in conjunction with Crispy Green found that the average person has abandoned his or her resolution by February 1.
Here are some ideas to avoid those pitfalls.
We all have an imaginary safe haven often referred to as a comfort zone. From our youth to our senior years, we create a corridor allowing us to function within the daily perception of safety. Everyone expands and contracts this area through different experiences. Some are content at 200 miles per hour circling a racetrack, while others will faint on a Ferris Wheel. Nevertheless, each person’s comfort zone is important for a sane and productive existence.
Many individuals, however, choose to hold onto their comfort zone as they mature with clenched fists. As a result, they create a very unhealthy disdain for new adventure. Ironically, many of these same people gladly teach their children to try different things.
Why, then, do so many become entrenched in their personal routines and cynical about reaching beyond? Even high achievers can find themselves stuck on personal plateaus resulting in depression.
Instead of being a crutch, the comfort zone can be prodded in many interesting ways leading us to discover almost limitless boundaries. Allow me to provide a personal example. My experience has been that personal growth often occurs as an unintentional reaction to a planned event which is one reason I love to travel. Once during a summer fishing trip to Canada, several friends and I inadvertently had such an encounter in the sub-arctic. We reached our destination by traveling eight hours north of Toronto by car and then sixty miles into the wilderness by seaplane. I can vividly recall the pilot dropping us off with a cigarette dangling from his lips (under a no smoking sign) and with a cynical smile. “You’re here for five days-hey, no radio-hey, if someone breaks their leg just string him up in a tree, and we’ll pick him up on the way back-hey.” He made his point. This place of awesome beauty had no way out except, by the way, we got in. It was priceless. Lifelong bonds of friendship were forged and now, us whenever we get together, that trip always comes up in conversation.
You do not need to be so dramatic. Stretching is critical and can be easily accomplished. Perhaps that is where the problem lies. Our human condition does not like commonsense answers. We like to make things complicated. Let’s give it a try anyway. Besides, as my father is apt to say, “without common sense, education is no more than books piled on the back of an ass.”
The solution is in your organizational skills. All you need is 2 minutes a day. Write one item in your daily planner that will break your ordinary patterns. You will want to make it easy at first and repeat this each day for a week. At the end of the first week, you should review what you accomplished. This item could be as simple as making candlelight dinner or talking with a stranger. If you are successful be sure to congratulate yourself. If you fail, who cares? At least, you tried and next week offers another opportunity. You can strengthen comfort zone muscles like training with weights, which will allow you to experience your life.
Simple solutions work and by expanding your comfort zone the goals for the new year might be easier to reach.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison
