STEVE POWER: Resolutions didn't last long

Oh no, it was the sound of New Year’s resolutions already breaking all around the world.

I expect many people are surprised at the speed of which they have broken their New Year’s resolutions, but the good news is that we are not alone.

Now if we took a leaf out of Wikipedia’s book we might not have found it that hard to keep our resolutions.

Wiki describes a New Year’s resolution as a tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person makes a promise to do an act of self-improvement or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people beginning from New Year’s Day.

Which begs the question… are we overreaching with the resolutions that we make? By vowing to visit the gym four times a week, or giving up alcohol, smoking and chocolate for the foreseeable future, it seems to me we are in fact setting ourselves up for an almighty fall. Instead, we should take baby steps and resolve to do something slightly nice like simply opening a door for someone. Something small and achievable like giving up your seat on a bus or offering someone a compliment so we won’t begin the year already feeling like such a failure!

Twitter is full of helpful suggestions from people who have already cottoned on to this new way of making resolutions. American singer Josh Groban has decided to meet people less and tweet people more@healthy, while others have vowed to ‘love myself like Kanye loves himself and believe in myself like Kanye believes in himself’ or to ‘incorporate ‘I don’t roll that way’ into at least one conversation a week’. Feel free to tweet me with any of your own suggestions.