How To Successfully Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

We all know the tired clichés about how we’re all so gung-ho at fulfilling our resolutions in January, but not so much by the time we get to February, and how we forget all about them for the rest of the year. Until, of course, we get to the last week of December, when we set ourselves up for failure once again, just like all those years before.

So after all those years of planning, hoping, and eventually failing to be better versions of ourselves, all we’ve got to show for it are some discarded diet plans, a handful of unfinished personal projects, and an obscene amount of wasted money on seldom-used gym memberships. We’re trapped in a vicious cycle just like everybody else.

But see that’s the thing—we don’t have to be ‘like everybody else’. It’s hard, of course. Easy is for ‘everybody else’. But with a little bit of planning, a proper mindset, and a healthy dose of willpower, we can see our resolutions through for 365 days and beyond, and finally rise above all our previous years of futility and failure.

Plan your resolutions according to these guidelines below and you’ll have a better chance of success. This applies not just to new year’s resolutions, of course, but to all of your life plans as well.

What If We All Could Live Forever?

What if we all could live forever?
Would life be easier or harder?
Would life be more or less sacred?
Would we feel more or less hatred?

What if we all could never die?
What if we all see centuries fly by?
Would we still have the will to live?
Would we still have love to give?

What if we all became immortal?
What if we all were beings eternal?
Would life still have meaning?
Would love still have feeling?

What if all our lives had no end?
What if we’re all endless like the wind?
Would we be glad being always young?
Would we get tired of seeing the sun?

What if we all could live forever?
What if we all had eternity together?
Would we try to treat each other better?
Would we still try to kill each other?

Photo by Julian Jagtenberg

Let's Talk About Our Bad Habits

We all develop bad habits throughout our lives that we always seem to have difficulty quitting despite knowing they’re harmful to us. We acquire most of them because of peer pressure, but some we get because we see other people doing them.

To a certain extent, these bad habits can be called addictions because we have no control over them. We’re either psychologically or physiologically dependent, or both. Depending on the severity, these problems can have varying degrees of impact in our lives-- from mildly annoying to totally disruptive. Serious cases may even require intervention and professional help.

You don’t necessarily need to worry if you have a vice because most people do. It’s often said that people without vices die young, but of course, this is just a ridiculous rationalization of bad behavior, or perhaps baseless superstition at best.

We’re not perfect by any means, and however hard we try, there will always be times when we’d succumb to temptation. What would set us apart from each other are our resolve and determination not to keep on doing what we know is wrong or bad for us.

Here are some of the most common vices and how to handle them. 

11 Advanced Technologies We All Want To Have

We’ve gone so far, what with our electric cars, slick smartphones, virtual realities, stem cell treatments, and organ transplants. But we’re humans and that means we always want more.

Here are some of the as-yet-not-invented technologies, both possible and impossible, that we’re all wishing for.

Seven Attributes We Develop When We Play Video Games

It’s been said quite often enough how video games can be bad for us—how they can make us become violent, how they can make us unproductive, how they can lead to antisocial behavior, how being addicted to them can result in poor personal hygiene, and how it can disrupt our daily functions, or as in the infamous case of an unfortunate gamer in Japan, how an obscenely excessive indulgence in them can lead to death.

What hasn’t been said quite nearly enough is how video games can be good for us, so as an earnest attempt to right that wrong, here’s a list of seven valuable attributes we develop when we play video games.

Useful Tips on Acquiring, Handling, and Maintaining Your Wealth

We all have different ideas on what qualifies as wealth. It’s true when they say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. This is because wealth is subjective. A comprehensive library of books would mean the whole world to one person while to another, it’s just a room full of dusty bound paper.

There is, of course, one form of wealth that everyone considers valuable and that is money. It’s important to all of us, not because it looks pretty, or because of its historical significance, or because of its state-of-the-art technology. It’s important to us because it empowers us to buy. It’s important to us because of how we feel when we have it: secure, safe, proud, useful, successful. The more of it we have, the better we feel. But because we've already discussed money in this previous post, we shall now concentrate on the other types of wealth that we’ll have in our lives.

We’ve all heard the saying health is wealth, and while that’s true, what we refer to as wealth, most of the time, are material possessions. When we have lots of money, we consider ourselves rich. When we have plenty of material possessions, we consider ourselves wealthy.

A nice house or a new car are some forms of wealth that most of us would aspire to have, not for bragging rights, but for the security and convenience they give us. When you find yourself having some extra cash, you’d want to treat yourself to some of the things you enjoy, and you’d be right to do so. You deserve it, especially if you’ve worked really hard to earn money.

Here are some things to keep in mind when acquiring, handling, and maintaining your wealth. 

How To Be Physically, Mentally, And Emotionally Healthy

In our teenage years, our twenties, and to a certain extent our thirties, we never really pay that much attention to our health. We are at our strongest during our youth. We feel invincible, so much so that we abuse our bodies by smoking, drinking alcohol, partying all night, not getting enough rest, working too much, eating junk food, and generally having no concern for our bodies.

Depending on the degree of abuse, we may feel the effects of our neglect as we creep into our forties, when our bodies would start to manifest some wear and tear. It’s a sad fact that the most effective motivation for us to quit bad habits is failing health—we quit smoking when it becomes hard to breathe, we quit drinking when we get liver problems, we eat healthier when we become obese.

Logic dictates that given their bad reputation, fatty, oily, and sugary foods should be avoided altogether, and we should just stick to green leafy vegetables and fruits if we want to be healthy. But it would certainly be a life that’s drab, if not lonely, if it’s one without the simple pleasures of soda, ice cream, donuts, steak, bacon, fried chicken, and all those other delicious grub that make life worth living.