Few of us are honest with ourselves. I wrote about in The $28,000 Question: Why Are We All Hypocrites About Our Wedding?, where I pointed out how we all love to say “My wedding will be simple, but it never really is. If we acknowledged that our wedding would be over $20,000, we could start saving for it. And when I pointed out how much you need to save for a wedding, people’s jaws dropped.

Let’s get real.

When 90%+ of people get consistently get the same result (failure for New Year’s resolutions), I start to believe that the real answer is, “forget it and acknowledge the truth.”

For example, when I constantly tell myself I’m going to take work home when I go to visit my parents — yet I’ve never actually done any work there — it’s time to be honest and acknowledge that I’m never going to work while hanging out with my parents. Now, I leave my work at home and enjoy my vacation.