How are you doing on your New Year’s Resolutions?  Are you still on track, or did they get thrown away along with the confetti from the New Year’s Eve party?

Why are resolutions to change (New Year’s or otherwise) so hard to maintain?  Why is change so hard?  I think it’s because when you get right down to it, we think that change sucks.  Let’s look at why:

• It’s scary – it’s a trip into the unknown. 
• It’s uncomfortable and sometimes even painful
• It leads to failure – which we’ve been taught is bad

It’s easy to see why we don’t embrace change wholeheartedly.  So why do we keep making new resolutions every year, every month, sometimes every day?  Why do we keep trying to change?

There might be a lot of answers to that question, maybe as many answers as there people walking around.  I think one of the main reasons is that change is an inherent part of existence.  Look around, things are moving, growing, shifting.  Life is changing all around you.  In physics, they even have a name for this constant change – entropy – and it’s always present.

Maybe we realize that if life is always changing, then we should get off the bench and actively participate.   Instead of changing in a purposeful way, many people become the puppet of the universe, just getting blown wherever and whenever.  That doesn’t have to happen.   I think that’s why we continue to make resolutions and change in specific ways, because we want to be agents of change (especially of our own change).  It’s our goal to direct the course of the change that we are going to undergo anyway.  I don’t think that we have the ability to completely alter everything we do, but I think that by making conscious decisions, we can influence where we go in a meaningful way.

So yes, change does suck, but it’s going to happen whether you like it or not.  Wouldn’t you rather be the one who determines how you are going to change, rather than being the passive recipient of whatever comes your way?