With 2016 finally coming to an end, we enter a new year; a chance to do everything we said we would do last year. I’m sure last night you were asked a million times, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” or heard the phrase, “I’m going to eat healthier and workout three days a week” (which we all know is a lie).

Social media is full of pictures with clever captions, and you will only see the phrase “New year, New Me” about a billion times. However, just because the new year brings a chance to transform the person you were last year into a perfected version of him/herself, doesn’t mean you have to. We need to stop saying, “New Year, New Me," and here’s why.

Let’s start with the “New Year” part. The New Year is an event we idolize, whether it be New Year’s Eve parties or proclaiming your resolution all over the internet. While it does represent the leaving of the year past, and the hope for a more enthralling one to come, it is nothing more than another day on the calendar.

Yes, it is a new year, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel pressure to create some big and extravagant resolution. You don’t have to make some radical change in your life every year just because the year is changing. Enter 2017 with an open mind and blank agenda, because if you are so focused on maintaining a resolution that seems impossible, you're going to have an awful year.

Now, we get to the “New Me” bit of the saying. If you ever said the phrase “new year, new me”, let me just ask you a question… Why?

Why do we feel the need to completely reinvent ourselves year after year? Has it ever occurred to you the reason girls feel so inadequate and insecure about themselves is because the world screams at us we need to erase everything making us who we are and become brand new at the beginning of each year?

Girls, let me tell you no reason exists for you to completely scrap the person you were last year, the person you still are, just to fit in with whatever idea of perfection this new year creates.

Don’t focus on becoming a new person this year, focus on being a better, more empowered, and confident version of yourself. That girl you were in 2016 doesn’t need to disappear in 2017. She doesn’t need to lose 30lbs. She doesn’t need to stop treating herself. She doesn’t need to stop wearing her heart on her sleeve. She doesn’t need to be more outgoing. She doesn’t need to be quieter. She just needs to be herself.

You are perfect just the way you are, and the only thing needing to change this new year is your perception of yourself. You are beautiful, you are enough, you are not perfect, but that’s okay because nobody is. That fit, size two girl with a boyfriend and flawless makeup you want to be in 2017 is not any more beautiful, valued, or loved than the girl you are right now.

So yes, it is a new year, but you’re the same you. The world doesn’t need another “goals” girl who is everything we want to be, but it is only skin deep because she is so concerned with fitting the social norms. The world needs you. Real, raw, authentic you. So ignore all of the “New Year, New Me” comments, and focus on being the best version of the current you.