According to a recent ‘Forbes’ article, only eight percent of people achieve their New Year’s resolution, with the vast majority of resolutions being “to get fit” and “to get organized.” That’s interesting, because according to the Google, “to resolve” means to decide firmly on a course of action. That’s a lot of people who end up not doing the one thing they tell everyone that they’ve firmly decided to do this year.

Assuming the Goshen College community is about 1000 people, only 80 of us will follow through on our resolutions. Statistically speaking, you probably aren’t one of those brilliant and amazing people.

And neither am I.

Statistically speaking, you and I are probably destined to fail at our New Year’s resolution by mid-March or so. I would tell you to accept now that you will be the same crappy person next year as you were this year, but statistically speaking, statistics don’t mean $#*%.

They can be overcome. You can achieve your New Year’s resolution. Here’s how:

Step 1: Choose a very, very obscure goal. The more fascinated and strangely interested people are in your unique goal, the more interested YOU will become in achieving it. Is anyone else resolving to read a random Wikipedia page everyday? Any resolutions to stop wearing green shirts? Who’s trying to hold their breath for 4 minutes? Any resolutions to start a VHS tape collection? Do you know anyone resolving to become an expert in Nordic Folk Music? The answer is no, because all of those are weird. Which is exactly why you should do them because at least then you’ll make yourself a statistical outlier of actually having a unique and interesting New Year’s resolution.

Step 2: Set the bar really, really low. Set the bar at “attainable,” then knock that down a few commitment levels to “piece of cake,” and you’ll do fine. Come October, you’ll be thanking me. For instance, if you resolve to keep an ant colony alive for a year, maybe don’t commit to the whole year. Take a few months to do the research first, and even then maybe just stick to YouTube videos of other people’s ant farms.

Step 3: Make the consequence of not achieving your goal extremely, extremely painful. Create a special bank account with 50 percent of your savings and set it up such that if your goal is still incomplete by Jan. 1, 2018, it will wire transfer all those savings to your most hated lobbying interest in Washington D.C. Not only will you have failed yourself as a person, but you will have failed society as well.

Forget all those people “resolving” to exercise more or organize more. I mean, you should do those things, just don’t resolve to do them, or else risk a 92 percent chance of failure. Instead, do something interesting, so even in failure you’ll succeed at being unique.