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