A New Year’s resolution is a promise that a person makes to themselves at the start of a New Year in order to enact changes they want or need to make in their lives. While many New Year’s resolutions are made under good intentions, by the middle of February, about 80 percent of the resolutions made have already failed. So many people wonder why these resolutions may fail or what they could do to actually succeed in reaching their goals, and the answer is simple. Don’t make a New Year’s resolution.
Year after year, we make resolutions to start on Jan. 1 in the hopes that we will follow through with them throughout the new year. We often fail at this, however, because we get distracted and sometimes even forget what our resolutions were. When the next New Year rolls around, we are tempted to make up new resolutions and claim that it will work this time because we are going to try harder. This continues each year, because New Year’s resolutions are often unrealistic. We say things like “This year I want to go to the gym every day, I want to save half of the money I make each month, and I want to be happier with my life.” While these may seem like great goals to reach, it is unrealistic to be successful at achieving them, because these are things that do not happen immediately.
Resolutions take time to accomplish. Wanting to change for the better is great, but how we choose to do it is extremely important. All people have room for improvement, but it is something that should be consistent and continue throughout the year. Trying to change everything at once will only cause more confusion and increase the likeliness of failure. New Year's resolutions are often made as a list of things that we feel we want or need to change about ourselves. These lists are difficult to accomplish if we try to do everything at once. Instead, change should be made incrementally.
The phrase "new year, new me" is a something that many people say at the start of a year. This phrase, however, is not something that we should follow. This phrase is telling us that because it is a new year, we should change everything we don't like about ourselves. While I believe in setting goals and accomplishing them, we should be working on ourselves day by day and constantly setting new goals throughout the year, not just on the first of January. Just because it is a new year does not mean you have to change anything about yourself. In fact, it would be more beneficial to remain true to yourself and improve small parts each day, because every small change adds up.
This year, don't make a New Year's resolution that will most likely fail; instead, take every single day as a new start. Motivate yourself to set goals when the time is right. Don't try to change everything all at once, take your goals step by step. And finally, stay true to who you are. New Year's resolutions do not define you. Whether you accomplish them or not, you are good just as you are. Don't let the idea of changing for the better get in the way of seeing all the goodness that is already within you.
