Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on...A New Year“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

– Ellen Goodman, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”

– T.S. Eliot, British poet, playwright, essayist and Nobel Laureate in Literature

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

– Edith Lovejoy Pierce, 20th century American poet

“A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

– Author unknown

“The reason so many people fail to keep their New Year’s resolutions is that they took the wrong approach ….according to British psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire…people who failed tended to dwell on the ‘bad things’ that would happen if they did not achieve their goal…successful study participants, on the other hand, broke their goals into small steps, rewarding themselves when each stage was passed. They told friends about what they were trying to achieve, reminded themselves of the benefits of obtaining their goal, and charted their progress.”

– Michael Kesterton, Social Studies, The Globe & Mail

“The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!”

– Edward Payson Powell, 19th Century American author

“People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.”

– Author unknown


For over three decades, Jim Clemmer’s keynote presentations, workshops, management team retreats, seven bestselling books, articles, and blog have helped hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The Clemmer Group is the Canadian strategic partner of Zenger Folkman, an award-winning firm best known for its unique evidence-driven, strengths-based system for developing extraordinary leaders and demonstrating the performance impact they have on organizations.