One Word That Will Change Your Life, Expanded Edition

Chapter 1

The Story of One Word

Every New Year, 87 percent of adults—more than 206 million people—create new goals and resolutions, only to experience the same frustrating results: false starts and failure. In fact, 50 percent of resolution makers will fail by the end of January! You read that right. Only half of us stick to our convictions for even 30 days. Most resolutions are long forgotten by summer. We derail and give up. That’s why an endless number of books and articles are written each year promising a “new you” and “your best life now.”

87 percent of us make New Year’s resolutions every year!

Although these resolutions are meant to be good and well-intentioned solutions, unfortunately they are built on a flawed foundation of more effort, willpower, and goal setting. We set to-do goals instead of to-be goals. Success is measured by what we accomplish instead of who we become. Making resolutions convinces us that all we have to do is roll up our sleeves again and get to work. The practice encourages us to put the power of life change in our heads and hands with a game plan to change our habits and then turns us loose. This approach ignores the most important part of life change: the heart.

We have also done our fair share of goal setting and resolution making at the start of each new year, only to experience the same frustrating outcome. You know the routine. Try and fail; move forward and fall backward. Our hope was to get better by setting goals and making resolutions, ...