Sticking to Your New Year's Resolutions

Each new year, Ancient Babylonians would strip the king of his clothes and banish him from the kingdom. They would have a festival and do as they pleased until the king came back. When the king came back, they would go back to working and doing what they were supposed to do. If you have ever wondered who started the whole deal with making New Year's Resolutions, you can blame it on the Babylonians.

However, you can blame it on yourself and your peers for pressuring you to make and keep New Year's Resolutions. There is no law that says you have to make them. It is only a custom that has been passed down generation after generation and usually ends up making people feel bad about themselves because they are rarely able to keep them. On the other hand, there is great satisfaction in being able to stick to one. So if you feel you must make a New Year's Resolution, the best one to make is one that you can actually keep.

The most common New Year's Resolution is to lose weight. Some other common resolutions are helping others, spending time with family and getting organized. There are more resolutions that are broken than are kept, but with a few changes in the wording and meaning of your New Year's Resolution, you will be keeping more of them.

If your resolution is to get organized, make a resolution to get rid of things that you no longer need. You could also make a resolution to give to people in need. By giving away the things you no longer need, you will have been able to keep two resolutions. A good solution to eliminating the time and effort it takes to find someone who needs what you have is to post it on freecycle.org. The person who needs it or knows of someone who does will come to your house and pick it up.