New Year's resolution prompt for class

The excerpt by John Tierney is using statistics to show that the majority of people will break their New Year's resolution. If someone with a New Year's resolution was to read this excerpt, they will have higher chances of breaking their New Year's resolution rather than succeeding. Unlike the excerpt the article by Tara Parker-Pope is encouraging people to go through with their resolutions. Tara Parker-Pope also says that most people will not succeed in their resolutions, but that is why she includes tips for succeeding. I agree with her statement that if you have too many resolutions then you will not have enough willpower to finish them all. To really succeed at a New Year's resolution you need to be able to focus on accomplishing it. If there are too many things you wish to change, then you will give up before you can change them all. 

My tendency is an obliger. Being an obliger I am able to meet my outer expectations, but not my inner. What I mean by that is that I can keep other people's promises to myself, but I am not able to keep my promises to myself. I put other people expectations for me before my own. This gives my personal New Year's resolutions a higher chance of breaking. This can be an obstacle when accomplishing goals because it makes it harder to achieve my personal goals. If I know that someone expects me to achieve a certain goal, then I will be more likely to achieve. I hope that this does not affect my career goals, but I doubt that it will.