Posted by: Uticopa in new year resolutions on
Jan 07, 2009
As Big Ben made its first chimes in the icy chill that heralded the New Year, many were those who decided to make a new year's resolution for the first time in their lives. After all the economic disasters of last year, it was perhaps inevitable there would be a collective inner wish for a better life in 2009. But are our resolutions doomed to failure as soon as life intrudes? Furthermore, do men make different New Year resolutions from women, and what can we learn from psychologists on how to sustain our inner pledges?
Prof Richard Wiseman, an eminent psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire, found that in smokers, only 12 per cent were successful in their resolution to stub out their last cigarette. Of those pledging to lose weight, only 28 per cent succeeded in avoiding the temptation to continue their largely sedentary habits.
To achieve success, men and women must follow different rules. Men are significantly more likely to succeed if asked to set a goal for themselves: for example, instead of trying to lose weight, focus on a measure of success, such as becoming more attractive to women.
All are agreed. 2008 was a terrible year. Woolworth's has gone, stock markets have crashed, house prices have collapsed and we're all a little poorer. To pile on the agony, it's making us feel old and ever more weary. Any one of these things is enough to send us into a spiral of depression leading to the very nadir of despair.
But help is at hand.
Hot off the presses is a book called ‘Pensioners in Paradis' by Olga Swan. It relates the story of how a couple reach that fork in the tree of life called retirement. They had lived their whole lives in the West Midlands - a place endemic with self-deprecation, pessimism and laconicism. And then disaster struck. Read what the Connexion, a national newspaper in France, had to say when they reviewed the book in December:
