What are your resolutions for the new year?

88% of all New Year's resolutions fail.

Three common New Year's resolutions are: lose weight, get a new job, and save money. These resolutions are classic examples of things that we work hard to achieve because we think that life will be great once we do. But if we actually achieve them, we already have our minds set on achieving what's next. And if we're part of the 88% that fail, we're less happy than we were in the first place because not only didn't we achieve the resolution that was supposed to make us happier, but we're also disappointed in ourselves for not achieving our resolution. Working so hard to become happy, we forget to just be happy.

New Year's resolutions still rank highly on my list of the most wonderfully important non-human nouns in the world. Like most people, I want to be as happy as possible. But, instead of choosing resolutions that I think  will make me happier once I achieve them, I selected resolutions designed to be enjoyable while I'm working towards them.

• Taste 15 fruits I have never eaten before. This was originally going to be "try every fruit," but upon further research, I discovered that not all fruits are edible or available in North America, so that would have gotten dangerous and too expensive. Also, I ran into the dilemma of differentiating between varieties of fruits. For example, are concord grapes and grapes the same thing? They are both called grapes, but I am very glad that I have tried concord grapes specifically because they taste even better than Swedish Fish. These dilemmas would suck the fun out of working towards the resolution, so I altered it accordingly.
• Learn to snowboard. In high school, I made a bucket list. On it was: learn to use a pottery wheel, pole dance properly, ice skate balancing on one foot, and snowboard. I have done all of them except snowboard. 2012 is the year.
• Study survival techniques. Freshman year of college, I added "go on a bike ride to a remote natural location" to my bucket list. For the full effect, the location must have a waterfall and I would camp there alone. Hence the need to learn survival techniques. It also seems fun to read books about living in the woods.
• Be more decisive. I feel that this is an admirable quality and also will make life less stressful because I won't be thinking about silly decisions too much.
• Don't beat myself up about it if I don't accomplish my resolutions. These resolutions are designed to make me happy when they are achieved and while I'm achieving them. If they don't end up making me happy, I'm going to stop doing them and I'm not going to feel unhappy about it.

Should you listen to your heart or use your brain?

Many well-meaning people provide the advice, "Listen to your heart." Proponents of this mantra believe that letting your emotions guide your decisions will lead to happiness. If you love someone, you should decide to be with them. If you hate your job, quit. Looking at these examples, this decision-making approach seems to make sense. Roxette pretty much sums it up when she says, "Listen to your heart, there's nothing else you can do."

There is something else you can do besides listen to your heart though: use your brain. Proponents of this decision-making approach believe that since our emotions are volatile, using our logic to make decisions is the path to long-term happiness. They believe that in situations that require delayed gratification, our emotions lead us to poor decisions. For example:

• Overcoming obstacles to achieve your dreams. If you "listen to your heart" every time you decide between goofing off or working, most people would have thrown their papers in the garbage and stopped working a long time ago. Although writing strategic plans or analyzing demographic information is not what our hearts want to be doing at that moment, our minds tell us, "Even though my heart doesn't want to work right now, I will so that I can go camping this weekend and still succeed in the long run."

• Healthy relationships. If all people "listened to their hearts" when they were angry or sad, this world would be full of flaky people. Everyone would break up with their sweethearts over insignificant tiffs, move out of their apartments every time their roommates forgot to wash the dishes, and a lot of friendships would end because someone had to lug a heavy purchase at least seventeen blocks through Chinatown. Our minds think, "I am frustrated right now, but I love my sweetheart/roommate/friend and we can get through this."

Proponents of the "use your brain" approach to decision-making appropriately distrust letting  their emotions guide decisions, but what they don't realize is that even decisions that seem to be logical are also guided by emotion. The heart decides what it wants, and the brain uses logic to justify the decision. Emotion is like a hyper puppy, guiding the decisions and then pulling the owner to go towards whatever it has already chosen.

image from thedogtrainerblog.com

The brain has no control over the decision, so she just goes with it. In the examples listed above, and others, emotion drives the decision and the brain justifies it with logic:

• Overcoming obstacles to achieve your dreams. Our heart knows that success will make us happy, and the mind justifies the means to get there, even if that means completing frustrating projects.
  
• Unsatisfying jobs. Our hearts also have trouble recognizing when we would be happier in another position, and the brain secedes to emotion. Over half of Americans are not satisfied with their jobs. (CBS News) Why don't they quit? Well, other emotions cloud the decision, and the brain finds a way to justify it, such as, "A job is work, so of course I don't like it very much. It supports my family and it would be even more work to start over. A new job will be just as bad as this one."
• Healthy relationships. Your love for your sweetheart/roommate/friend guides your decision. We get through tiffs by thinking, "Since I love my sweetheart/roommate/friend and we can get through this. Arguments are inevitable."
• Unhealthy relationships. On the other hand, sometimes humans don't recognize unhealthy relationships because their emotions guide their thinking. For example, many women remain in abusive relationships by disassociating the man's behavior from the man they love. They think things like, "He only hits me when he drinks to much, so it's the alcohol's fault, not his."  In other words, since they still love him, they use logic to justify staying in the relationship. I couldn't find the original study, but here is another good article describing battered women's logic behind staying in an abusive relationship.
• Saying "listen to your heart." When our little brains can't find a way to justify a decision that doesn't make any sense, they can always fall back on "Listen to your heart." You can justify many decisions with this phrase. Try it.

As you can see, some of these decisions were favorable and others were faulty. Although they appear to be logical, upon closer inspection we realize that emotions guide the decisions and logic goes along for the ride. Since we can't trust our hearts, and our minds think whatever our hearts tell them to, what can we trust to make our decisions? Maybe an unbiased but informed and honest third party. In other words, let someone else make all of your decisions for you. However, since our emotions would cause many of us to have trouble putting complete faith in someone else (even a BFF) to make all of our decisions, we might just have to make faulty decisions and then learn from them.

Why are Americans becoming more promiscuous?

It is a mathematical fact that, on average, your friends have more friends than you do. You can read the entire article by Scott L. Feld, but here is my summarized explanation of this phenomenon:

Applying the same concept to a larger population, you are more likely to be friends with someone if they have 58 friends (your chance of being one of those friends is 58 out of 7 billion) than if they only have a few (your chance of being one of their friends is then only 3 out of 7 billion). So, if you average the amount of friends that your friends have, it is likely larger than the actual average number of friends that people have.

This concept also applies to number of sexual partners. You are more likely to sleep with someone if they sleep with 58 people than you are to sleep with them if they only sleep with 3 people. If someone has slept with zero people, he or she doesn't get counted in anyone's calculation of "average number of partners that my partners have." So, when someone looks at the average number of partners that her partners have had, it is likely higher than the actual average. The people that have slept with more people are overrepresented and the people that have slept with fewer people are underrepresented.

According to Social Comparison Theory, people form their own behavior by comparing themselves to others. So, if they compare themselves to their sexual partners, it is likely that their partners have had more partners than the actual average, so they will form their behavior based a skewed number. In other words, they will think, My partners have a high number of partners, so it is acceptable for me to sleep with more people, when in fact, their partners have had more partners than the average. So everyone sleeps with more people, pulling the actual average up. This is one possible factor that contributes to the national average number of sexual partners being higher now than it was in 1900.

I don't have the authority to make a judgment on whether or not the rising average number of sexual partners is favorable, but we can learn from this phenomenon to enhance our individual lives.

• Don't be discouraged when it seems like you are lacking friends. Using your existing friends as a comparison group, it will appear that most people have more friends than you do, when this is actually not the case.
• Appreciate your friends that only have a few friends and your partners that only have a few partners. If you get to have sex with someone that only has a few partners, you're pretty lucky to be one of them. 58 people can say "I slept with someone that slept with 58 people," but only 3 people can say "I slept with someone that slept with 3 people."
• Consider this concept in other situations. It also applies to family size (you are more likely to meet someone that has six siblings than is an only child) and crowded public places (you're more likely to be part of a crowd than part of a few random people). Can you think of any others?

What is the key to success?

You're reading this post because a.) You want to achieve success or b.) You're my friend so you feel obligated to read my blog and we both want you to achieve success. To begin figuring out how to achieve success I have been asking the pros—successful people. In my years of questioning, I have gotten an assortment of answers, some answers much more profound than others. Nonetheless, all of the answers listed below (with interpretations in my own words) have been helpful.

Alleged Key to Success #1: Hard work. Chances are, what you want will be something that isn't hard "work" but hard "play" because you enjoy it. You don’t have enough time or energy to do everything, so decide what you actually want to dedicate your time to. I could work really hard at becoming a world-class boxer, but that is not what I want. The real key to success isn't undirected hard work, but having a clear vision of what success means to you.
 

Actual Key to Success #1: Envision success. Define what success means to you by setting goals. Is success earning enough money to buy your own house, loving and being loved by your friends and family, or running 4.4 miles in 44 minutes?

In a Harvard study, three percent of participants had clear, written goals when they left Harvard. Ten years later, the three percent with clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent of graduates all together. (What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School by Mark McCormack). I don't know about you, but I'm going to set clear goals so I can be part of the three percent!

I could write an entire post about goal setting, but since that's not the goal of this post, I'll just recommend that you read Brian Tracy's books for advice on setting successful goals.

Alleged Key to Success #2: Patience. I associate "patience" with waiting around for something to happen, but the reality is that you've got to take action! If your definition of success is to make a million dollars, then practice balancing Oreos on your tongue to win Minute to Win It, buy a lottery ticket, or get really good at something so that somebody will pay you a million dollars to do it. A word to replace "patience" in this case is "persistence," because persistence implies taking action instead of waiting around.

Actual Key to Success #2: Persistence, commitment, motivation, determination, or some other variation of continuing in the presence of obstacles. Now that you know what you want, you've got to use your relentless persistence to get it.

• If your definition of success is to get at least a 3.5 GPA, you've got to study. There will be times you get a 44% on an "Introduction to Theater" test. A successful person will reevaluate her study techniques to do better in the future and pass the class.

• If your definition of success is to write a blog with 1,000 hits, you've got to write. There will be times you lose your mojo. A successful person will get it back to keep writing, and even amp up his blog with visual elements.

• If your definition of success is to love and be loved by your friends and family, you've got to invest in your relationships. There will be times that conflict is inevitable. A successful person will remember why they care about the other person and argue respectfully so as not to ruin a cherished relationship.

When the going gets tough, successful people remember what they want their future to look like, and do everything they can to get there. 

Alleged Key to Success #3: Luck. This is the "right place, right time" aspect of success, such as when you meet your soul mate at Wegmans or land a professional position that is the perfect fit. If you are willing to take risks, there are ways you can increase your chances, such as applying to more jobs or meeting more people by going to Wegmans more often. So the key to success here is having the confidence to take risks.

Actual Key to Success #3: Confidence. You've got to believe in yourself and expect that you'll achieve your definition of success, otherwise a rational person wouldn't waste his or her time trying. If your definition of success is "build and maintain a loving family" but you don't think you'll ever meet a marriage-worthy man or woman, why would you waste your time meeting potentials? And if you never take the time to meet potentials, you won't ever achieve this type of success. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 

Summary of Keys to Success: Optimism. Optimism is "a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome." (Dictionary.com). If you have optimism, you will automatically have all of the above keys to success.

• Defining success means knowing what success looks like to you. In other words, envisioning a favorable outcome.

• When the going gets tough, an optimist expects a favorable outcome. This unrelenting belief provides optimists with the motivation to commit to achieving success in the presence of obstacles. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel gives you the persistence to see obstacles as opportunities.

• Since an optimist believes that a favorable outcome will happen, she has the confidence to take chances, seize opportunities and achieve anything.

Optimism about a certain situation will allow you to envision success, provide the persistence you need to overcome obstacles, and give you confidence to succeed. Someday, when an aspiring young professional asks me “What is the key to success?” I will say "optimism" (or at least "having a very optimistic friend that wants you to be successful").

Wouldn't it be great if we had to pay job application fees?

Many readers likely think that the title of this post is sarcastic. Some of their thoughts:

• Job Seekers: "I don't want to pay all those application fees."
• Hiring Managers: "I would not get as many applications."
• Everyone: "You're nuts!"

I agree that all of these statements are quite true.

Job seekers wouldn't want to pay the fees, so they would only apply to a few jobs. Smart job seekers would focus on a few companies that they really respect and eliminate applications to jobs that they aren't qualified for. Now each applicant only applies to 3 companies instead of 30! Although job seekers wouldn't enjoy forking over money with their applications, time is money, and this plan would save the time normally spent on writing cover letters for jobs the applicants don't want.

It would appear alarming when instead of 300 resumes per day, hiring managers only receive 30. However, as explained above, these 30 resumes would all be from qualified candidates that really want the job. Hiring managers would then save time sifting through irrelevant and sloppy resumes from applicants that don't even care about their companies. As a qualified and enthusiastic job seeker, now my resume has a shot at getting looked at!

To address the third hairy bullet, I am a little nuts. Charging job application fees seems crazy at first, but upon closer inspection, it's a viable, time-saving, win-win strategy. The next time somebody comes up with an idea that seems crazy at first, look at the idea's merits before you shoot it down.