When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, we’re pretty abysmal.

Not that making New Year’s resolutions is abysmal, but our ability to actually keep them is particularly poxy. It’s said that about half of us make New Year’s resolutions, but only about eight percent of us actually keep them. Eight percent … that’s a solid F minus.

New Year’s Eve inevitably brings out the mantras, affirmations and aspirations, millions upon millions of people taking to social media to express how they’re making new goals or stepping into their destiny, moving to the next level or claiming their inheritance from the universe … something like that. It’s like someone coded a random phrase generator using the twitter feeds of Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra and pumped out a random string of meaningless drivel.

Hey, we’ve all been there. This post certainly isn’t about judging the spirit of all these mantras, affirmations and aspirations. People genuinely want to change, to improve, to have a better life … to live a life of joy and meaning.

Wishing to have a life of joy and meaning isn’t enough though. We don’t get a life of joy by just wanting one. How do we go from etherial to tangible?

One day, I would like to visit England. I want to trace my family’s roots. I want to see the world famous landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, St Paul’s Cathedral. I want to watch the first day of an Ashes test match at Lords. I would like to attend a lecture at Cambridge. I want to see sites of wonder like Stone Henge. I want to experience the local delicacies like black pudding. I would even love to go to Ireland and drink a pint of Guinness, or to the highlands of Scotland, put on a kilt, and have a haggis.

That’s all well and good, but I’m not going to get there unless I get a passport, buy plane tickets, book hotels, book transport, get some maps, and ensure that I’m in the right place at the right time to be at Lords for the opening session of the Ashes test.

Then I actually have to get on the plane and go, and do all those things I want to do.

We all want joy – no one ever seriously says that they want a life of misery. We all have values that we aspire to fulfil. We need those values. As I’ve written about before, they provide direction to our lives. Values reflect what is most important in the deepest part of ourselves that we can access.

In order to live by those values, and to experience the richness and meaning that our values add to our lives, we have to act on them.

We have to get on the plane. We have to take effective action.

In the framework of ACT, this sort of effective action is called “Committed Action”. Committed action means connecting with individual styles of effective action, driven and guided by core values. As we talked about yesterday, things in life inevitably change, so committed action also needs to be flexible – being able to adapt to the invariable changes of life but still being driven by your underlying values.

Committed action doesn’t mean perfect execution. We are human beings and we are bound to fail, to drift off course or to run into obstacles. No matter how many times we drift away from our values, when we are committed to our values, we can always reassess where we’re at and get back to them.

The word “resolution” comes from the word “resolve”. If we want a life of joy and meaning, we need to do more than make up some New Year’s aspirations. If we’re going to have New Year’s “resolutions”, we need “resolve”, “settle or find a solution to a problem or contentious matter, decide firmly on a course of action”.

Take the next step. What’s one specific, concrete thing you can do in the next day that’s in line with your values? It doesn’t have to be complex. It can be as simple as hugging your kids every day, or calling a friend to arrange a time to catch up over lunch, or getting up ten minutes earlier to go for a short walk in the morning sunlight. Whatever it is, take that step.

If we resolve ourselves to committed action in line with our values, we will be able to translate our desire for a life of joy and meaning into actually experiencing it.