I’ve always been a believer in the age old axiom, never make a promise you can’t keep, which also happens to be my philosophy when it comes to New Year’s resolutions – why make a resolution you know you can’t keep?

I also have a thing for keeping expectations as low as possible so that more often than not I will exceed them.

These two approaches in life come in handy when going through the annual rite of New Year’s resolutions – never make a promise you can’t keep and always keep your expectations as low as possible.

I know there are some people out there who equate a New Year’s resolution to the act of setting a goal they then strive to achieve. I’m not one of them. You’re just setting yourself up for failure. Like making a New Year’s resolution to walk 10,000 steps a day.

Sure you might walk 10,000 steps a day for the first few days and maybe for more than a week, but eventually you know you’re going to take a hard pass on that power walk and your resolution becomes a hard fail.

During COVID, I made a New Year’s resolution to get out of bed before noon. Much easier to keep. Or to put my clothes on every day. Unfortunately, that only lasted a couple of days. i obviously set my expectations way to high.

Last year, I ignored my age old approach of keeping my expectations as low as possible by resolving to lose 10 lbs.

Miraculously, I did manage to lose 10 lbs and thus kept my New Year’s resolution, but I gained it all back a few year’s later. Which brings up another approach to making New Year’s resolutions – the time frame.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution to stop smoking, make a New Year’s resolution to stop smoking for three days. It’s much easier to keep and has a much greater likelihood of success.

Another approach to making New Year’s resolutions is to make them sufficiently ambiguous to the point where failure is not an option.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution to quite smoking or quite drinking, make a New Year’s resolution to cut down. That could mean anything from cutting down the number of cigarettes you smoke to the number of visits you make to McDonald’s.

One of the most ambiguous resolutions of all which made last year’s top five list was
“being happy”, not even being more happy, just happy. Hard to break that New Year’s resolution.

In a recent survey of the most common New Year’s resolutions, 21 per cent of the respondents chose “saving more money”. Sounds easy enough except that most people think they are saving money when they use their credit card. That’s an automatic fail if there ever was one.

The 4th, 5th and 6th options in the survey are also impossible to keep. They are lose weight, spend more time with friends and family, and quit smoking.

The third most popular option in the survey is to exercise more. But relative to what? And what kind of exercise? This is a totally subjective New Year’s resolution, the success or failure of which is based on your own level of expectation.

But my favourite is the second most popular resolution in the survey – eat healthier.

Once again, the chances of success or failure of a resolution to eat healthier depends on your expectations and what your definition of “healthier” is. For some it could mean eating a piece of fruit every week, or mixing in a salad once in awhile.

You couldn’t possibly set your expectations any lower or make them any more ambiguous than “eating healthier”.

Which brings me to the present tense and my own New Year’s resolutions for 2025.

The first is to do a better job staying in touch with my friends and family, which is sufficiently ambiguous to warrant being included on my list.

The second, which I know goes against everything I just wrote, is to exercise more and maintain a target weight.

Who knows how long it will last, but at least I will make an effort and sometimes it is better to play and lose than to never play at all, unless you’re in Las Vegas.

My final New Year’s resolution is to con-tinue to strive to be a nice person. It’s a New Year’s resolution I wish a lot more people would make and take the effort to keep. The world would be a lot better place if they did.

(If you wish to comment on this or any other View Point column please write to Fred Sherwin at fsherwin@orleansstar.ca)