I hope and pray that 2014 has been good to you so far.

It’s only been a few days, but already I’m hearing messages of people breaking their resolutions. Diet and exercise goals are not being met, newly formed habits are cast by the wayside, and overall, people have thrown up their hands in frustration because they think they have failed.

It’s on the news, it’s on Facebook, and it’s in every lifestyle article I’m reading lately. Before we’ve barely gotten the horse out of the gate, people are proclaiming the race is lost. Why aren’t people sticking to their well-thought out goals and resolutions? What’s happened?

Simple. They didn’t read the fine print. The what? If you read the fine print at the bottom of every ad, every commercial, and every product you purchase billed to effect some miracle change in your life, they all say the same thing.

“Your individual results may vary.”

So, the hottest anti-aging cream, the coolest new exercise equipment, the undergarments that will magically reshape my body don’t work? Not really.

Think about it. I’m no mathematician, but it really boils down to the law of averages. It’s likely that these so-called miracle products may in fact work very well for some people, but not for you. Why? Because those people either made a different decision or had a different intention than you.

Let’s break it down. You purchased the hottest selling anti-wrinkle cream on the market. Your hopes are high. Your commitment is strong. You use it diligently for the first week. Then your schedule gets thrown out of whack and you miss a day. Then you miss another, but then you remember again, but miss the next. After two or more weeks of this, you decide that the product doesn’t work and it gets tossed into the drawer alongside all of the other so-called ‘miracle products.’

What happened? Why didn’t it work? One reason could be there is no such thing as a miracle product so stop wasting your money. But the other reason might just be that you lost your commitment. You lost your determination. You lost hope. You gave up. Why? Because it just didn’t happen fast enough.

We live in a Twitter world. If you can’t say what you want to say in 140 characters or less, people won’t listen. If I can’t get what I want, when I want it, well, you know the rest. In short – we give up too easily.

Six months ago I decided to restart my exercise program. I thought by now that I would’ve reached my weight loss goal. Nope. Is it because my treadmill doesn’t work? Is it because I stopped working out? Nope. I still work out 5 days a week.

Why haven’t I achieved my goal? Because somewhere in my brain I think because I’m working out, I can eat more. Oops!

The result? It’s taking me longer to lose the weight. My treadmill is still my treadmill. My workout routine is still my workout routine, BUT… if I don’t do what I agreed to do when I set my goal, I cannot expect the same results. See? Individual results may vary.

I may not have reached my weight loss goal, but I have achieved a new goal of being able to burn more calories in 30 minutes than I was able to six months ago. Not bad. I feel stronger, more energetic, and while the number on the scale may not have wiggled enough for my liking, there’s slightly less of me wiggling when I walk.

So then, what’s the lesson?

Don’t. Give. Up. Ever.

Even if you don’t see the results you want to see in the short-term, persevere. If you made a resolution or two for 2014 that you’ve backslid on, it’s early. You can still do it.

So…do it.

Jen’s Gem: Don’t Give Up on Your Goals. Ever.