Simplify Your New Year's Resolution Process: Reflect, Select, Remove

Breaking from our usual habits is difficult and often painful – requiring not just willpower and stamina but also the courage to take risks, to fail, and to pick ourselves up again. The turn of the year presents a dangerous allure: That of the clean slate. We make big, bold resolutions as if starting from scratch. Didn’t accomplish those 2011 resolutions? Well then, it’s time to double-down for 2012! Unfortunately, it’s not so simple. Most of us have existing commitments (jobs, relationships, etc) and a slew of bad habits (a Twitter-checking obsession, a weakness for mindless Netflix instant movies) that don’t go away at the end of the calendar year. Now, before you think this post is going to depress you, my point is not that we should throw up our hands and do away with New Year’s resolutions. Rather, it’s that we should simplify our goals – fully recognizing our existing constraints, strengths, and weaknesses – so that we can actually achieve them. Let’s choose quality over quantity this year. Let’s dispense with the resolutions list that’s a vague mishmash of broad ambitions and aspirational new habits in favor of a more targeted, more meaningful, more achievable list of goals. Read complete 99percent.com article.