It’s New Year’s Eve Eve, and as I look back at last year’s resolutions I realize I still have two days to:

• Lose 15 pounds
• Get back to running
• Spend more time with family
• Sell 10,000 books
• Finish rereading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
• Learn to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix

OK. I didn’t set those New Year’s resolutions for 2025, but I would have been pleased if any of those outcomes had happened. At times, I have set rubbish goals with this magical, mental-mirage thought process, which can lead to last-minute distress, and despondency. I have empirical evidence that “ wishin’ an’ hopin’” doesn’t work.

I did achieve one goal this year. I published my second book. No, it hasn’t sold 10,000 copies, (yet -😉), but some people have left encouraging reviews.

So what is the difference between resolutions that succeed and those that re-emerge next January providing – “oops” embarrassment ? Some of it is the goal itself.

A resolution is a goal.

Perhaps by now, we all know about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. A goal must be:

• Specific – “get back to running?” – what does that mean? From 27 to 42 I ran an about twenty-five miles a week, ran multiple races including two marathons. Between 42 and 55, I engaged in: lose-weight – run-too-much-too-fast-injure myself – repeat. From 55-78 I’ve replaced running with walking, stabilized my weight – still too high but stable, and have fewer injuries. Get back to running? 27-42 or 42-55? Or a little jog mid-walk?
• Measurable – yeah, 15 pounds, but… 2 lbs./week? Measured unclothed on the scale? My scale or the doctor’s, which weighs 3 lbs. heavier? Keeping each increment off for how long?
• Achievable – 10,000 books? 6.7% of books that are traditionally published hit 10,000 sales their first year. Only 0.4% of all self-published books like mine sell 10,000 copies in their first year, and most of those “best sellers” are by people who are “famous” in a small circle, e.g. business owners, trainers, or speakers.
• Relevant – Jimi Hendrix is repeatedly listed as the best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. Hendrix played lead electric guitar, a right-handed Fender Stratocaster flipped upside down; he was left-handed. Nobody plays like him. Even guitar-gods like Eric Clapton stand in awe. Since I was 13, I have played at acoustic guitar, chords, a little finger style, but mostly strumming. The Hendrix bar is so high I can’t see it.
• Timebound – it isn’t enough to say “this year I will.” Improvement goals are set in stages: Month1: move from walking two to three times / week; Month 2: add a jog 100 yards at first working to half a mile. Month 3: one mile jog without stopping, etc.

S.M.A.R.T. is about the characteristics of the goal. If I am serious about New Year’s resolutions, I should be clear about WHY I am setting this goal.

If I am setting a goal in order to impress someone else, or compete with someone, I am likely to set a Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goal, a “stretch” goal that seems impossible, one where if I got halfway there I’d still feel good. When Jim Collins coined the BHAG, he was encouraging executive change teams to be bold. Individuals, like me should, reread Achievable above. Competition spurs one on to achieve, if the contestants are equally capable and the goals fair and achievements are visible to all.

Psychologist Dr. David McClelland’s research into achievement motivation showed that people who achieved goals tended to set a series of incremental goals that they could definitely make. The “stretch” came over all levels, not one single goal.

Be careful about setting personal goals that depend upon other people for their achievement. “Spend more time with family?” I’m retired and my kids are spread around the country, work demanding jobs and have little children of their own; I might have to include my family in the goal-setting process. Selling 10,000 books depends on reaching many more than 10,000 people and convincing some to buy.

What is your resolution implementation infrastructure

When I quit smoking years ago, I informed everyone I knew, motivated by avoiding the public embarrassment of failing to quit. I weaned myself from cigarettes to cigars, which lasted a week. Cigars tasted great, but all the women in my life hated the smell. I then smoked a pipe for a month. Women liked the smell, but pipe tobacco tasted terrible. My wife still smoked, but was supportive of my attempt even joining in for a while when I started running to clear my lungs of tar and nicotine. I had charts in my office and kitchen at home that tracked first my days without a cigarette, and then my running distances and frequency.

I’d like to say I planned all that, but it evolved intuitively. My process does include several elements of implantation infrastructure:

• Internal motivation – Health, and not wanting to try and fail (avoiding humiliation).
• Support network – my wife, non-smoking friends at work, runners.
• Changed habits – the weaning from one kind of tobacco to another to running. (I gave up drinking for the first year because under the influence, will power disintegrates.)
• Visible metrics – the charts started conversation with office mates and guests at home  and reinforced my progress. Some were inspired to quit too, which increased support.

New Year’s Resolution Help from Marcus Aurelius

I first “read” Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in Philosophy 101 in college. Like a lot of books I “read” in college, I practiced my Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics skill, i.e., I skimmed liberally. I do remember the professor saying that “the Greek Stoics,” with whom Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was enamored, “did not elevate reason above emotion like the Platonists.” The professor said this with a certain sneer, but I quite liked the idea of viewing humanity’s soul as a unitary phenomenon, logos and eros, left and right brain, intuition and reason combined.

Marcus Aurelius, logged by historians as a “good Emperor,” well, better than Caligula to be sure, wrote Meditations, while on a military campaign against the rebellious Germanic tribes. Nothing like a war, to make you reflect on becoming a better person. Still Marcus Aurelius did write some pithy words that might help us in the New Year’s resolution department:

• “Stop analyzing and debating what a good person should be. Be one.”
  • “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”
  • “Remember that kindness is irresistible, if it’s genuine and not phony or feigned.”
• “You have no control over external events. You only control your mind. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
  • “What words form regularly in your command center? Pain, distress and anger? Or self-reliance, cheerfulness, strength, and perseverance?”
  • “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
• “Keep practicing, even when there seems no hope of success. The left hand is useless for most things, but it grips the horses reins more firmly than the right because it’s had plenty of practice.
• “Remember how long you’ve been putting this off and how often the gods have given you due dates of which you’ve not taken advantage. It’s high time now for you to recognize…that a limit has been placed upon your time, and if you don’t use it…the opportunity won’t come again.”

Have a happy, healthy, kind, caring, and productive 2026.