New year, new me. It's the wish many New Year's resolutions are based upon and it's the hope more than one sales strategy taps into. The desperate optimism that when the clock ticks over to midnight we'll be magically transformed.
"New year, new me" we whisper to ourselves as the fireworks erupt and we hope desperately for this to be the year it happens for us. The year our relationship changes, our money problems disappear, our weight loss happens, our business turns around, our job becomes more fulfilling, we finally discover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and that unicorns exist.
![You can start changing your life any day of the year.](/web/20170130041739im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/0/g/m/s/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu1723.png/1485738287480.jpg)
I say bollocks to that!
Good intentions are no better than crossing your fingers behind your back and hoping really, really hard. Or wishing for a fairy godmother or a handsome prince.
It's simply fantastical. Which is why I say, bollocks to that.
Instead, I believe in embracing the courage it takes to make real change. To decide this is the year you'll learn to stand, to walk, to run, to climb, to dance, to paraphrase Nietzsche who went on to say, "after all, one cannot fly into flying".
Hands up how many of you did anything about the New Years' resolutions you made on January 1. To pay off your credit card debt, start saving, buy an investment property, start a share portfolio, sign up to a financial app or perhaps to financially grow up? For those that did something, how many of you have seen it through some four weeks later? My bet is it will be less than 10 per cent. The research tells us only 9.2 per cent of us feel we were successful in achieving last year's New Year's resolutions, so why should 2017 be any different?
Do we abandon all hope and simply accept that we are unable to change? Or do we decide that this year we're going to forget saccharine resolutions and take the courageous step of making real change?
Two years ago I decided to do just that – to put an end to the self-sabotaging behaviours I carried out in areas of my life. Which, let's face it, are often the reason so many of us behave poorly with our finances. Sadly, on January 2 I didn't wake up a new me so I had to put in hours, months and if I'm really honest, two years of effort to see the type of transformational change I wanted. This involved breakthroughs but also enormous setbacks.
Instead of wishing you were someone else, why not decide this year to embrace who you are and to live the best life you can with all that you are? If you want to have better finances, it means understanding your relationship with money, acknowledging what you want out of life, understanding your behaviour and choosing to take the blinkers off and do something about it.
Sure we're a month into the new year but here's the real secret. You don't have to start on January 1 and you don't have to be transformed by December 31. To financially grow up. It doesn't matter when you start. It just matters that you do.
Now repeat after me: "New year, new me? Bollocks to that!"
Melissa Browne is CEO of accounting firm A&TA; and author of Fabulous but Broke.