As many people will see on their social media feeds, the "new year new me" posts are already here. I do not agree with the concept of "new year new me" simply because I don't think that the clock ticking 12 a.m. on December 31 will actually change someone. I was always told that it takes three weeks to get into new habits. This means that by the time that someone makes their New Year resolutions, they still have three weeks to get into the habits that they are promising themselves to begin.
Goals like these can be discouraging. When you promise yourself something over a year's time, it is easy to get off track. Easier than that, people can fall back to the habits that they promised to break. This isn't necessarily healthy or worthwhile.
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Instead of making goals like, "I want to lose this much weight in a year," I think that people should make goals that can easily be broken down into smaller increments of time. So, if someone's goal for the New Year is to lose weight, then they would probably benefit from making checkpoints every few weeks. To make a goal like this, it is also beneficial for them to make smaller amounts, and to set goals that focus on health and well-being rather than just weight.
When making goals about losing weight, I think it is important to remember that muscle is so much more dense than fat is, so if they are working out regularly, they will lose weight at first, but then they will start to slow in weight loss and eventually plateau. Once this happens, they may get discouraged, and even stop making such great progress. If they had smaller goals, though, they would be able to focus on the little victories, rather than focusing on the concept that they may not make their goal that they set for themselves.
Another problem that I think a lot of people have is that they focus too much on the negative things rather than the smaller positive things when reaching their goals. If my goal is to get straight A's next semester, I should try my hardest to spend time on the nights that I spent studying hard, learn from the nights that lead to not-so-great mornings — sorry mom, and focus on the little things (like getting an A on a quiz), good marks from the professors, and good grades on exams. I shouldn't focus on the occasional not-so-great quiz score, or when I wasn't my best in lab, because in hindsight, these things can bring you down so much more mentally than they ever could if you just didn't focus on them.
So, in hope everyone meets their goals this new year, I also hope everyone keeps in mind that "new year, new me" just isn't as possible as it seems sometimes.
