Simple Steps to Breaking Your Resolutions
The papers are full of advice at this time of the year on how to keep your New Year’s resolutions, but the man who wishes to learn how to break them is left to his own devices.
Social scientists and brain experts alike weigh in on tactics to extend the time you have spent adhering to your vows until past a point they become second nature, but no time in the least advising the reader who wishes to not adhere to them at all.
I say not adhere to them ‘at all,’ but that is a typical journalistic exaggeration.
What I really mean to say is that there is a length of time determined by professional courtesy that we ought to give our resolutions. It’s just not very long.
Scientists who don’t mind swimming against the tide estimate it as somewhere between thirteen seconds and thirteen minutes.
First though let me get something off my chest.
What were you thinking? Going around making resolutions in such a reckless manner!
I just can’t get over it. Resolutions! Have you gone off your rocker?
You will say, for I know your typical excuses, that all your friends were making them and it just seemed like a cool thing to do.
I supposed plunging headlong over a cliff just because your friends were doing it is also a ‘cool thing to do.’
Well, you have gotten yourself into this situation and now it is up to us to get you out.
First, you need to know that you are not alone.
I know how it looks to you now. You glance around you and see every adult and many children aglow with the satisfaction of having made and kept their New Year’s resolution.
This is a big joke.
Even at a generous estimate and rounding up to the next highest number and multiplying by the sum of the squares of the other two angles, approximately nobody keeps their New Year’s resolutions.
In fact, hard-hitting studies have shown that over 235% of resolutions are broken yearly, the excess 135% being accounted for by resolutions that are made twice and then broken twice, resolutions broken before they are made, and resolutions that resolve to undo previous resolutions. The math is complex but the conclusions are compelling.
But it is a secretive world and the data has never been pulled together in any meaningful way or published in the ‘right’ scientific journals.
The would-be resolution breaker, finding nowhere else to turn, begins hanging out in various dens of iniquity, approaching total strangers and asking them in a whispered voice if they know where a fellow can get rid of a few good resolutions, no questions asked.
More than one person has been drawn into the company of low companions and unhealthy habits in this manner. In this regard, as in so many, we are not yet even out of the Dark Ages of resolution breaking.
But why bother with all this rigmarole?
Eliminate the middleman, this is the cry of the age. Let us just get you out from under these resolutions and let you get on with your life in a reasonable way.
Experts in these matters conclude that you are better off with the quick action, the swift slice of the knife. In the end, it is kinder.
Look at it from the resolution’s point of view. He or she entered this contract in good faith.
Words may or may not have been spoken, hands may or may not have been shaken, but at the end of the day the two of you have entered into this compact, voluntarily on the part of both of you, and as far as the resolution knows, you intend to stick to it.
And you do intend to stick to it!
In these matters I think it is right to show a respectful regard for the institution of resolution-setting and give each of them a certain length of time as a show of good faith before you break them.
This is that thirteen seconds to thirteen minutes I was speaking of just a few moments back.
This ample length of time gives the citizen, replete with that satisfaction that only comes from a resolution well-resolved, some time to dwell in the pleasure of having the courage and self-knowledge to identify needed areas of improvement and to act upon that knowledge.
Who else does that these days? This I ask you. Who else does that?
But, upon reflection, and there’s quite a bit of reflection involved in this resolution-breaking business, weren’t you really a different man back then when you made the resolution?
That was a full thirteen seconds to thirteen minutes ago and, well, a man changes.
A lot can happen to a fellow in that length of time, changing his outlook on life and giving him to consider whether it might be better to make these resolutions next year at this time.
In the year between now and then there will be time to carefully consider exactly which resolutions rise to prominence and which character shortfallings most need correcting.
He sees now what his mistake was, and that was to not prioritize his resolutions but to take them on wholesale so to speak, direct from the factory, without putting them in proper order. He sees that now.
His heart was too ambitious! That was the problem.
No, now the burden of all these resolutions are weighing him down, decreasing the volume of red corpuscles in his system, increasing the flow of gastric juices, providing mental distress at a level that had to be experienced to be believed, and generally making him sad.
It is clear that these resolutions, at least in such daunting numbers, are no good for him and simple common sense directs that he break them, and break them quickly, if only for the sake of his health.
This is a delicate stage of the negotiations right here, and one open to debate.
Do you call them to mind one at a time and break the news gently, or do you bring them all into the room at once and give them the word in one single utterance?
Fine people come down on either side of this issue. The latter course seems to have the edge in efficiency, but recall, many of these resolutions have no idea that the others exist. This is a double shock to the system.
The former one-at-a-time path is the kinder, but with so many resolutions it really does take a hell of a long time, so the High Volume Approach wins out.
You proceed as follows: you call to mind all of your resolutions, those having to do with Calories, those having to do with Good Deeds, those having to do with Malted, Distilled, Brewed, or Vinted Beverages, those having to do with Exercise, those having to do with Reading Good Books, those having to do with Watching Less TV, those having to do with Writing the Great American Novel, Poem, Symphony, Limerick, or Long String of Punctuation.
“Fellows, gals, could I see you all in the living room? I know you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here. Look, from where I’m sitting, this just isn’t working out. With any of you. I wanted to give it to you straight.”
At this point we can imagine them looking at one another uneasily.
“I want to make something clear right here. This has nothing to do with you personally. This is all about me. You’ve been great. You were there just like you said you were going to be for the entire thirteen seconds to thirteen minutes. You kept up your end of the bargain. It’s me that changed. Me. This is all on me.”
You muse, as though upon the many mysteries of man.
“I was a different person then, I said things in a thoughtless moment that I now regret, and as a result, I got you all tangled up in it. That’s what troubles me the most.”
Well, you would go on from there, but a lot of it going forward is private. Your main intent is to leave these resolutions with their dignity.
So you see these things can be handled in an adult manner, and if I have to be the one leading the charge then so be it.
Let us put an end to this shaming and bring resolution-breaking out of the shadows.
Though I still can’t believe you made them in the first place. All of this could have been avoided!
