Ahhhh…the start of a new year. It brings hope. It brings renewal. It brings change. Or does it? Does it really bring change? Or are we all just fooling ourselves?

I almost never make New Year’s Resolutions. You might be surprised to hear that from the author of a motivational blog. Of course, I do believe in change. My inner being is naturally drawn toward self-improvement and change. But I almost never make New Year’s Resolutions. Well, at least not anymore.

Sure, there was a time when I did. They usually centered around probably the #1 most common resolution: exercising and losing weight. I admit it, I come from a family who really dislikes exercise and loves food. Not a good combination, right?! Not that we are overweight. Quite the contrary. My older sister is skinnier than most 12 year old girls (#howisthatpossible). Anyway, I was always the “big” one of the family, even though I have always been an average weight. But in comparison to my skinny sisters, I always had to “watch my weight.” Hence, the New Year’s Resolutions of the past – weight loss.

Guess what? Every time I made a New Year’s Resolution, I failed. I’m not saying that I haven’t gone on diets and exercised and lost weight. I have. But the times when I was successful at my “get healthy & lose weight” goals, well, they weren’t started on January 1st of any given year.

Why is that? Here are 4 reasons why my New Year’s Resolutions have failed, and why yours for 2014 might have already too:

1.      I wasn’t really committed to it.

If I was really committed to my goal, I wouldn’t need “January 1st” to make the change. I would only need August 13th at 10:02 a.m. The time or date doesn’t matter when you are truly committed. You don’t even need a Monday (start of a new week, similar to the start of a new year). You just need NOW. When you want something with all your being, you don’t need an arbitrary start date like the beginning of a year.

2.      I didn’t design my life in a way to support the change.

Over many, many years of trying to incorporate exercise into my life, I finally realized what worked and what didn’t. Sure, they say “go to an aerobics class with a friend, so your commitment to them will make you get your tushie off the couch and go.” Um, yeah, that didn’t work for me. Well, it did for a while until I resented the fact that I had to go just because I committed to another person. So eventually, I just stopped working out with friends. Ha! What DID work, however, is realizing that one of my problems with exercise is that I find it extremely boring. And I don’t like taking the extra time to drive to a gym, get dressed and undressed, blah blah blah. I want to do it as quickly as possible and get it over with. My solution? Get a stationery bike and a weight machine and exercise in front of my TV while I watch my favorite shows. Believe it or not, it helps me forget I’m exercising (a little). #okaynotreally #butithelps

3.      I didn’t want it badly enough.

Have any of you ever hit your breaking point where you will do anything to change? I’m talking about the points where you are so disgusted that you will literally move mountains to not stay where you are. Yep. Me too. That’s the only time when I actually had success with my weight loss goals. I had to be so sick of how I felt that I no longer missed food or made excuses to not exercise. (Okay, I always miss food - who am I kidding?! But you get my point!)

4.      I was in love with idea of my resolution, not the steps I had to take to get there.

Sure, we all want to be skinny, rich, healthy, _______________ #fillintheblank. But guess what? It all takes effort. It takes work. Sometimes there are negative pay-offs. Even something like getting rich has its payoffs. You might have to work long hours and have time away from your family. Maybe you don’t want to do that, so you don’t make the sacrifice. We usually like the idea of the destination better than the journey of actually getting there.

So that’s why I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions anymore. I don’t need to. I don’t need an arbitrary start of the year to commit to my goal. If I’m not committed now, there is nothing January 1st can do to force me to commit. That’s quite a bummer actually, because I really wish a brand new year held magical weight loss powers. But it doesn’t, and we all know it. So let’s just stop pretending. All we really need is to dig deep inside ourselves and figure out a better way to commit to our goals.

Meanwhile…I’ll keep you posted about when I reach my breaking point with losing weight, and I’ll call you from the aerobics class at the gym. Oh wait. No I won’t…make that my stationery bike in my basement …

… you don’t say ‘No’ to your children!

When I was little, my biological grandfather used to say to my Mom, “How do you get your girls so appreciative of an ice cream cone when they have everything they could ever want?” (we were relatively well-off). I know why. It’s because if we didn’t express our genuine appreciation to her, then we would never get anything ever again (this is only a slight exaggeration). And my sisters and I knew it. Whatever my mom did, it worked.

Fast-forward a few years. Now, we live in a culture of excess. I wrote about this last month when I was ranting about the JC Penney TV commercial that encouraged us to leave our families on Thanksgiving night to go shopping on “Black Friday Eve.” I won’t rehash my problems with that (you can go read for yourself), but this is kind of an extension of this idea of excess and entitlement.

When my kids were younger, they would complain. Oh who am I kidding, they still complain sometimes! LOL! But not nearly as much as they used to, because I have been trying to squash that behavior for years. But when they were little, they would complain about what was for dinner, or what toy they did or didn’t have. I would always have a long talk with them about how lucky they are and point out how they shouldn’t be complaining.

Here’s one tactic I have used with them for many years. I sponsor a disadvantaged child in the Philippines. Actually, now I’m on my second child. The first one, Brian (yes, I know that doesn’t sound like a Filipino name, but it was!), has since grown up. Now I'm sponsoring Carl (not much more of a Filipino-sounding name, I realize). Anyway, when my boys complained, I would always get them in front of a computer and show them where Brian lived. I would say, “What do you think Brian would say about your complaining? He doesn’t even have a bed and hardly has any food to eat!” That always shut them right up. It even got to the point where just the mere mention of Brian - or the first part of the sentence - “What do you think Brian would  –“ my sons would say, “Okay! Okay! Okay!! Nevermind! We get it!!!!”

As good as this sounds, I still battle the complaining, even to this day. For example, my oldest son finally is at the age where he wants “cool shoes” (translation: EXPENSIVE shoes). I am the queen of buying shoes at Target, but no, apparently that’s no good anymore. He wanted “good” shoes. And the ones he wanted were $80.00. I’m thinking, “Really? What waste of money!” So we had a squabble about that one. He kept pushing, and I said, “Do you know how many kids in the world don’t even HAVE shoes? Not even one pair?!? Most families in the world live on less than $750 a YEAR!!!” Being 12, he understood, but he still wanted the $80.00 pair of shoes nonetheless. Ugh. I’m still fighting the effects of living in a culture of excess.

Usually, I have no problem saying ‘no’ to them. Believe me, they are anything but deprived. But in my opinion, saying ‘no’ to them only gets them to appreciate what they do have. Most of the stuff they have they had to earn. I didn’t just hand over a brand-new iPhone to my oldest son. Okay, I did get him the shoes, but I made him wait until Christmas. Otherwise, I would have made him earn those too.

The point of the blog is this: It’s okay to say ‘no’ to your kids. Just because you don’t buy them all the “cool” stuff or everything they ask for doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. I know we all want our kids to be happy, but as the saying goes, kids spell love “T-I-M-E.” 

On a side note, I also think it’s also okay to say no to yourself. Just because you want the newest, biggest, coolest thing-a-ma-jig that comes out, doesn’t mean you should buy it if you can’t afford it. :)

I’ll leave you with this: I think human beings appreciate what they have when they have had to work for it…at least a little. Getting things handed to you on a silver platter only breeds expectation and a sense of entitlement. You don’t have to agree, but that’s how I see it. :)

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My book, Radical Relationship Resource: A Guide for Repairing, Letting Go, or Moving On is now available on Amazon and also here on my homepage or the ‘Books’ page. I also have E-Courses now available as well. (Here’s the link for the book just in case anyone is interested!) http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Relationship-Resource-Repairing-Leting/dp/0615901468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382560098&sr=8-1&keywords=radical+relationship+resource

***Subscribe to my Blog on this page! Then send me an email at [email protected] and I will send you my free E-Course called, "A Crash Course in Self-Talk." It will help you analyze and get over negative things you tell yourself, about yourself. This is the first step toward positive self-growth!***

***Friend me on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/carol.morgan.391***

Those are the words I kept hearing from my 10-year-old son when I was on set filming 11 videos for an eHow.com video expert series. I took my boys to the shoot with me, since they were on winter break. That might have been a mistake. Not only were they distracting me with occasional comments like that, but I kept getting annoyed with them thinking it was so easy to read the scripts!

I have to be completely honest – I actually thought it would be easy, too. After all, I learned to read when I was less than 5 years old, so that means I’ve been reading for … hmmm … let’s see … well, let’s just say a really, really long time. And I also wrote the scripts myself for all the videos. So how hard could it be, right?!? Well, as it turns out – very hard!! I had to correctly read about two minutes of a script on screen in one continuous shot with no bloopers at all. I know, I know, it doesn’t sound difficult. But let’s just say that the video shoot took a lot longer than I expected.

But there’s the fun part. I finally said to my son, “Okay. If you think it’s so easy, why don’t you come over here and do it yourself?” He gleefully skipped over to show his mom a thing or two. So I sat back and prepared to giggle uncontrollably.

And I did.

After he read about a paragraph he said, “Oh my gosh, Mom!!! This is really hard!!” #herecomemygiggles

Uh huh. So, of course I said, “I told you so!! It’s not as easy as it looks!!”

That’s the lesson in this blog:

Sometimes it ain’t as easy as it looks.

Think about it, how many times have you heard people who don’t have children criticize the “bad parents” in the grocery stores or restaurants? I admit, I was one of those people. Until I had children myself. Now when I see a crying, screaming toddler in the grocery store, I have mad empathy for the parents. Then I say a silent prayer thanking God that I’m past that stage of parenting.

Or how many times have you complained about your server in a restaurant saying or thinking, “How hard could it be to remember to get me a refill for my water?” Well, if you haven’t been a server yourself, you might want to keep that comment to yourself. Anyone who has waited tables will tell you, “It ain’t as easy as it looks!”

I could go on and on with examples. Being a teacher (“They get home at 3:00 and get all summer off!”). Being a working mom (“She doesn’t feed her family healthy meals!”). Being in customer service (“Why is that person so grouchy?”). Being a boss or owning  company (“They get to take time off whenever they want and they are rich!”).

Anyone who is a teacher knows that it’s tough work. And being a working mom is a thankless job sometimes. And you’d probably be grouchy too if you had to deal with demanding, complaining, rude customers all day! And being a boss? Owning a business? Yeah, well, you are a slave to your company. You don’t ever really get a “day off.”

So next time you are so quick to criticize someone because you think it should be “easy,” think again. We’re all just doing our best. And unless you have truly walked in their shoes, you really don’t know how difficult it is.

As for me, I have gained mad respect and give huge props to TV anchors. They make the job look so effortless. They read off teleprompters for a living. I used to think that looked easy.

Boy, was I wrong.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and is off to a productive 2014!!

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My book, Radical Relationship Resource: A Guide for Repairing, Letting Go, or Moving On is now available on Amazon and also here on my homepage or the ‘Books’ page. I also have E-Courses now available as well. (Here’s the link for the book just in case anyone is interested!) http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Relationship-Resource-Repairing-Leting/dp/0615901468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382560098&sr=8-1&keywords=radical+relationship+resource

***Subscribe to my Blog on this page! Then send me an email at [email protected] and I will send you my free E-Course called, "A Crash Course in Self-Talk." It will help you analyze and get over negative things you tell yourself, about yourself. This is the first step toward positive self-growth!***

***Friend me on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/carol.morgan.391***