Depending what survey you are looking at, approximately 48 percent of us make New Year's resolutions, but only 8 percent succeed in keeping them. Many things can go wrong on our path to change and it takes a great deal of energy, determination, and aspiration to stay the course. In This Year I Will . . . How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True, M. J. Ryan lists the top ten reasons why we fail at these projects; some of them being vague about what you want, not making a serious commitment, telling yourself self-limiting rut stories, and turning slip-ups into give-ups.
Some of us enter the New Year with firm resolutions no matter what our record in the past has been. We want to roar into the New Year with all engines humming. This collection of quotes on change reflections a wide range of perspectives. We have an obligation to change not only for our own health and development, but also for the world's sake:
- Mahatma Gandhi put it this way: "Each of us must be the change agent we want to see in the world."
- Beatrice Bruteau, quoted in Jan Phillips' book The Art of Original Thinking, makes change imperative: "We cannot wait for the world to turn, for times to change that we might change with them, for the revolution to come and to carry us around to its new course. We are the future. We are the revolution."
- And Joan Chittister notes our impact upon the future: "The function of one generation is to make change possible for the next. The real function of each generation is to sow the seeds that will make a better world possible in the future."
Quotations about Change
- Edward Searl on Starting Afresh
- James Hillman on the Difficulty of Change
- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee on Fundamental Changes
- David Chadwick on How Everything Changes
- Bernard Glassman on Seeing Things Afresh
- His Holiness The Dalai Lama on Changing Yourself
- Elizabeth Lesser on Dealing with Fearful Change
- Eknath Easwaran on New Opportunities to Change
- Master Hsing Yun on The Wheel of Rebirth
- Dainin Katagiri on The Flow of Change
- M. J. Ryan on One Day at a Time
- Mary Pipher on Incremental Change
- Susan and Larry Terkel on Small Change
- Bradford Keeney on The Way to Change the World
- Daniel Gottlieb on That Which Changes Everything
- Jean Smith on The Slowness of Change
- Margaret Wheatley on The Importance of Listening
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on A Revolution of Values
- Jon Kabat-Zinn on Tiny Steps for Change
- Marianne Williamson on A Great Unfolding Drama
- Mark Nepo on Change as Shedding
- Jim Wallis on Change from Touching Pain
- Anne Lamott on Commitment to Change
- Thomas Moore on Change and the Dark Night of the Soul
- Cynthia Kneen on The Shift That Makes a Difference
- Donna Schaper on Seeing Change
- David Aaron on Change and Obstacles
- Irwin Kula on Gestation Time
- Desmond Tutu on God's Transfiguration of the World
- John Howell on Going Out to Change the World