Have you ever decided on a new year’s resolution? Of course you did…. And did those resolutions fail over and over again? Of course they did….
Lets us have a look at the top 5 most common resolution over the past 10 years
5- I want to be nice to people around me (family/friends/colleagues)
4- I want to make more money
3-I want to hit the gym
2- I want to quit smoking
1- I want to start a diet
Now if we examine why did we fail over and over again in applying those resolutions, we will notice that once we start applying any of them, the daily habits will kick in and takes us back at square one. We would start justifying our actions by sentences like: I need this cigarette; I have too much pressure, or a bar of chocolate won’t hurt me now; it is just one.
Al of this is natural for two reasons:
1 - We don’t commit to ourselves: as long as no one is scrutinizing what we do, we don’t have a clear discipline and will tend at breaking our promise to ourselves
2- The goal is not worthy enough; we will end up saying that by smoking a cigarette or grabbing a piece of cake it’s not the end of the world.
But what is the end of the word?
This year, resolutions are pointing to a very different, yet focused point; saving the world and more specifically saving the world from Global Warming. Everyone is taking that resolution seriously and that is mostly due to 2 events that have happened in the last quarter of 2009: Copenhagen summit and the movie 2012. In the later, the difference that we have witnessed compared to other similar movies is that, the end is very near and that is, not even in 2 years. We need to take action and action starts at home. By turning off that light we don’t need by turning of the TV and DVD plugs when not in use and by closing the water tap when we brush our teeth or shave, we would be contributing in saving that world. It also goes to using our cars; do we ever car pool? Do we walk to the shop that is 200 meters away? Being environmentally friendly follows us at the office, we don’t need to print every single document that we use, we shouldn’t use plastic and paper cups but replace them with our glass cup or mug, and we should be recycling everything we use.
If we commit this year to a green resolution we will for once be doing a good deed not only for ourselves but for people around us and generations to come.
So let’s turn our green resolution into a habit and do something different this year.
The author Camil El Khoury is the Chief Vision Officer of ideas group; the Middle East leading experiential learning consultancy. www.ideasgrp.com
