Do you still make them?
I don't. A cold day in January when you might not be at the peak of your energy/positivity levels (to say the least) is not the day to stop doing things you like, or to start to demand great things of yourself. Also, the giving stuff up type don't work because most people can't deprive themselves of things they love to order; you break bad habits when the time is right for you to do so, not because the calendar's flipped over. You might suddenly get in the zone for dieting, or capture out of nowhere the willpower to give up smoking, on some random Wednesday in April, not on January 1st.
My thoughts on some popular NYRs:
- Losing weight - well, I first made this one on January 1st 1972, I think, and did so for many more years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Obviously never that successfully or I wouldn't have kept making it for 43 years!
- Giving up smoking - see paragraph above the starfish picture.
- Going to the gym - signing up for a gym in January then not going is such a cliche I'm not even going to mention it (oops...).
- Be a nicer and more tolerant person generally - that will work until something really gets on my nerves, which might be in about two hours' time when I'm in Morrissons.
