The holiday season is upon us once again--time to spend time with your family, exchange gifts, see the beautiful lights, welcome the snow, drink hot beverages and celebrate the incoming new year. You get to say goodbye to the past year, whether it was good or bad, and you get a clean slate to start over with. With New Years comes new years resolutions. You know resolutions, those things everyone makes to "try and better themselves" in the next year. Some examples of new years resolutions are the "I'm going to start going to the gym more" (that's a popular one), the "I'm not going to swear so much" or "I'm going to stop drinking pop". They are kind of like goals you make for yourself after you reflect on the past year. They are things you like to make yourself believe you'll actual achieve in the new year. I personally thinking people should just forget about making new years resolutions for themselves and I'll explain why.

Now let's think about the most common new years resolution out there: the resolution to exercise more and start going to the gym. Isn't the most popular gym day of the year January 2nd or something like that? The gym is probably the most crowded the first couple weeks of January because people always make "going to the gym" a new years resolution that hardly ever lasts long. I mean there are some people who make their resolutions and really stick to them, more power to those people but I feel like more people make their resolutions and fail a few weeks in (I'm guilty of being one of those people). I feel like the act of making new years resolutions sets you up for failure before you can even try and attempt them. There is a difference between new years resolutions and goals, of course. I'm not saying people shouldn't make goals in their lives. I feel like people pick random stuff they think they should do rather than things they actually want to do. For example, if I made the resolution to stop swearing so much, I wouldn't be making it because I wanted to actually stop swearing. I'd be making it because I feel like it's something I should do. Going in with that mindset is already setting myself to fail.

I also feel like making new years resolutions is cause for eventually feeling bad about yourself or feeling like you did something wrong. So you have your resolutions, you try them out for a few weeks and then you fail. You look back on them and feel bad because you didn't achieve them when in reality it's not that big of a deal, you probably only made those resolutions because you thought you had to or that it "might be different this year". It's not different this year.

So, rather than worry about your new years resolutions and when you have to start them and dreading it, eat all those carbs, skip the gym, drink more coffee than physically possible. Just do what you love and if you actually want to start exercising more or swearing less, do it because you actually want to. Not because you feel obligated by some stupid list of resolutions you made because you thought that's how it works. Skip the resolutions, go with the flow of life and surprise yourself with what you can achieve.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!