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The 24th of January should be declared national 'I give up' day according to a recent survey of over 10,000 new year resolution makers worldwide. The survey has revealed that it is on this day that the average person breaks their new year resolutions - just over three weeks after making them in the first place. Perhaps proving the futility of us trying to make a change to our lives simply because we have moved to the other side of midnight on 31st of December each year. Remember also that this is the average time we break our resolutions so plenty of us will make it past the 24th - maybe even to the end of the month but many more wont even make it that far. In fact the survey goes on to find that only 15% of respondents thought they would still be keeping those resolutions by February. According to the survey, it is the British who give up their resolutions first with an average of only ten days before they admit to breaking them closely followed by the Australians (12 days) and Americans (14 days) with the South Africans of all people showing the most will power sticking to them for a whopping seven weeks, well in to February. The survey was conducted by a new weight loss brand, as part of its market research before launching in the UK. It discovered, perhaps unsurprisingly, that losing weight is still the top ambition year after year on our new year's resolution list but that most people either had no plan or unrealistic plans for achieving this goal. Hardly surprising that just 24 days later, losing weight gets put on the back-burner until its time to panic about looking good on the beach come Summer. "We were initially only interested in researching weight loss for our launch but we became fascinated not only at how quickly we break our resolutions each year but also what a bizarre list of resolutions we make in the first place so decided to publish the results! It just goes to prove that setting realistic expectations and a clear plan are important if our resolutions are to last." said the research company. According to psychologists the answer to why we are so bad at keeping the promises we make to ourselves at 11:59 each New Year's Eve lies in our motivations. We give ourselves permission to munch on that extra mince pie or glug an extra glass of wine if we know that come midnight on the last night of the year we will pretend to ourselves that we are going to make amends. As the excitement of the holidays fade and the gloom of a new year which appears likely to be about as exciting as, well, the previous year, all our motivation subsides and we go back to our normal state of being. Nothing wrong with that. Digging deeper into the survey, however, things get even more interesting. The company went on to ask what people's resolutions actually were - with startling results! We can now reveal the first global top ten of new year resolutions. With over half of us now over weight or obese it's not surprising that losing weight was still top of the list but, once you get past the predictable top three of weight loss, smoking and drinking, the list gets more interesting and those same psychologists will surely have a field day trying to work out what it says about the society we have become.
'Having more sex' makes an appearance at number six. Remember, this is a global survey so that's an awful lot of sex. More remarkable however is that it seemingly takes priority over family and friends who only get mentioned at number nine, marking the first occasion on the list that we actually think about somebody else other than ourselves!And whatever happened to honesty? Looking at number seven it appears there's a lot of workplace dishonesty going on. Anybody who manages a team of people will surely now be treating their team with constant suspicion even if they are trying to be more honest with their own boss. Perhaps most worrying of all, given the global economic crisis is that paying off debt only just scrapes on to the list at number ten. It seems paying back money we've borrowed is way down the list of priorities compared to getting laid more often or eating more salad. There's always a Chinese proverb for situations like these and these results have reminded me of one of the more famous examples. It's perfect for the humble individual trying hard to better himself. Just remember that 'a journey of a thousand miles starts with just one single step'. Alas it appears that at around about step four on this journey there's a gaping crevice in the way that none of us can navigate past. If the crevice had a name it would have to be 'will-power' and that's a whole other story. Perhaps then, given what we have seen of the resolutions themselves, it is more than a little comforting to know that we live in a world of under-achievers who give up on their resolutions before the month is out, let alone a season or an entire year. Afterall, there's more to life than salad and sex, isn't there? Author: David J Cox David Cox http://www.bootcampinabottle.com View Count: 70
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