May I start by wishing you all a happy new year, and ask you the question have you made a new year’s resolution?
If so, how long do you think it will last? Whatever your resolution was for 2026 it is likely that most resolutions made concern improving your financial position in one way or another. However, the most common resolutions concern personal health and wellbeing, or personal growth and development.
Here are some sad facts for you…
23% are abandoned by the end of the first week.
33% fail by mid-January, there is even a day called ‘Quitters Day,’ which is the second Friday of January.
43% will have been abandoned by the end of January.
Why do so many resolutions fail?
There are three main reasons for abandoning your resolution which are…
People set a big goal which doesn’t have real structure, small goals to help you on the way and rewards to keep you going.
Lack of real commitment. Often resolutions are created due to what I call a casual want. Something which at the time seemed important and really wanted. However, the want isn’t deep enough or strong enough to have a chance of succeeding. It is more of a nice idea to have/do/be that. Not a must have almost to a passion or selfish want.
Setting a goal based on what you feel you ought to do rather than a personal desire. These are often set due to societal pressure, perhaps getting that ‘perfect look’ as we see on social media, and totally unrealistic, what is now referred to as fake news!
I would suggest that a good resolution for 2026 is about personal health and wellbeing but not through dieting or changing your looks but by connecting to nature. Often, we seek to make changes to how we feel or look, based on a feeling of dissatisfaction in ourselves. This is unlikely to be successful as we are not tackling the real problem.
So, what is the real problem?
Often the real reason is a sense of feeling out of sync with life, too much pressure, a feeling of loss of control. This is actually being out of balance within yourself and for most people this is due to being disconnected to nature.
We were born in nature, lived in harmony with nature and received many benefits from nature. We began to drift away from nature Some 500 hundred years ago we, when towns and cities grew up and job opportunities drew people to move away from a rural life to an urban life.
However, it was over the last 250 years that the speed of separation accelerated when the industrial revolution began. Since the 1960 the pace has increased even more, as we used new technologies discovered during the world wars. What had been used for destruction and death became cheap ways to make things using new materials and cheap foreign labour..
This change began with fashion which suddenly meant it wasn’t just rich people who could be fashionable, anyone could. This spread to furniture, how you decorated your house, electrical goods, cars and so it has gone on.
We now live in a throw-away society; this has led to us to viewing everything as being throw-away. Including our attitude to work, ‘I can leave and get a better job when I want!’ To personal relationships, therefore if things get tough you get a divorce, this has led to the breaking down of communities.
All of this has led to feelings of loneliness and isolation; a sense of not belonging. Despite an inbuilt need to be part of a group, which extends back to the days of being cavemen.
We live in a push button age and fast food; these have led to many people being overweight and not getting enough energy. In addition, our often-sedentary lifestyles lead to feels of greater stress than we can cope with. The idea that we live a more stress filled lives than our ancestors did.
Often, we turn to medicine to try and solve the problem, but these can mask the symptoms rather than help us deal with the problems. The result of all this is more people seeking the help from the medical profession, putting that under strain. Stress-related illnesses causing absenteeism in the workplace. This leads to lower levels of productivity and companies feel the pressure.
Most of society’s problems are rooted in how disconnected we are to nature. For a brief period during Covid many people rediscovered some of the benefits of spending time in nature, both to their physical and mental self. Sadly, once Covid ended, we resumed our old lives, and it was lost. We returned to being out of balance.
In my 2026 Blogs I will share with you the many ways in which connecting to nature can help improve the balance of people, businesses, children and society.
Join me on a journey to a better you, better business, better society, better world, on the first Monday of each month. I hope you have and will enjoy these articles, if you do, please share them with others.
If you would like to find out more on how nature could help or your business,
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