Good Words for the New Year

New Year, new you and all that nonsense. But I think there’s something to be said for new beginnings, a blank sheet of paper, a bit of a reset. New Year’s resolutions famously fail spectacularly.

Apparently only 9% of people keep New Year’s resolutions, if they make them at all. Personally I find that a startlingly high number. Fitness app Strava has identified the second Friday in January as “Quitter’s Day”, presumably the day all the 1 January downloaders stop running and go back to eating tubes of Pringles. It’s no wonder, since 43% are honest enough with themselves to straight up assume they’ll have given up by February. They’ve already given up before they’ve even started. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to start by actually honestly believing you CAN achieve them. But don’t take my word for it; let’s hear what a disparate group of successful people have to say.

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
Henry Ford

“There is always an opportunity to start again and again, if the old ways are not working last year, look for better ways of doing it in the new year and start again afresh.”
Bamigboye Olurotimi

“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
Robin Sharma

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”
Thomas Jefferson

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.”
Neil Gaiman

“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.”
Alan Cohen

“What do you need in the New Year? You need a dream; your dream needs an action, and your action needs right thinking! Without the right thinking, you can have only unrealized dreams!”
Mehmet Murat Ildan

“It’s humbling to start fresh. It takes a lot of courage. But it can be reinvigorating. You just have to put your ego on a shelf and tell it to be quiet.”
Jennifer Ritchie Payette