Many not making New Year’s resolutions

The Boston Globe:

This year, Chifuku Kuwahara, an aspiring artist from Roxbury, is making a New Year’s resolution he knows he’s going to keep: He’s vowing to make no resolutions.

“There’s this cultural idea that you have to come up with something,” he said, “but pressuring yourself on New Year’s Eve is the wrong way to do it.”

Every year a substantial portion of the population sets a personal ­fiscal or dietary or no-smoking cliff. Studies show that about 60 percent of American adults plan to make a resolution and that 40 percent actually do, said John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton and author of “Changeology: 5 Steps to ­Realizing your Goals and Resolutions.”

But what about the other 40 percent, who not only don’t make resolutions, but don’t even aspire to? Who gave them permission to opt out of a ritual that historians say dates back to Babylonian times, when the ancients promised to repay debts and return borrowed items?

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe