Should New Year’s Resolutions Still Be a Thing?

With the last year that just came to a conclusion and a fresh one that started a week ago, we can feel nothing less than excitement, motivation, and the will to be better than ever before. It’s almost as if we didn’t just witness the birth of a new year, but one of our newer, wiser, and more sophisticated selves along with it.

Every year, before the 1st of January, most of us, humans on this planet, think of or even write down our resolutions for the year to come.

It’s almost as if, during New Year’s Eve, we live in the anticipation of unlocking a brand new version of ourselves.

• A version that can surpass our older selves’ shortcomings.
• A version that can overcome the fears, doubts, and low points our older selves have experienced.
• A version that can finally achieve the impossible.

Where do all these ‘new, new and new’ attributes come from, though? And why do they always respawn only on the 1st of January and fade away as days pass and our goals keep getting postponed?

Well…I perceive it as being kind of romantic, yet with a slight touch of hypocrisy.

Let me explain!

Why romantic?

It’s romantic because it’s not an isolated incident. It happens to the vast majority of people, even to ones who don’t care to admit it.

I can even go as far as saying it’s a ritual that unites us and makes us humans.

And guess what! Since I consider myself as being neither the absolute moral standard nor a god of some sort, it even happened to me! As much as I tried to resist this trend, I couldn’t.

My cognitive dissonance, however, was very much present. Whenever someone asked me on the 31st of December whether I’ve gathered my resolutions for the year to come, my answer would almost always find its place on the negative side.

And I wasn’t lying. On a conscious level, I didn’t put a pen on paper to write any resolutions.

My subconscious, however, was surely filled with hopes and dreams. After all, I consider myself to be a life-long dreamer. I always dream of the impossible. I always have hopes out of my reach, waiting for them to get quickly within my grasp. And somehow, if I’m being completely honest, I feel them amplifying at the beginning of each new year.

What can I say, I do carry the ‘burden’ of being an imperfect human being.

Why the hypocrisy, though?

This choice of a word may sound a little harsh. I know. But bear with me a little.

While I do consider that having a list of resolutions is a combination of cute and funny, I don’t believe it’s completely harmless. It might sound a little dramatic, but I do think it holds true.

Most of us, even throughout our adult years, still hold on to this resolution-making habit. Every year.

Yet, in most cases, our resolutions don’t find their happy ending. If we’re all being honest, most of the time, we don’t manage to fulfill them.

• We can’t wake up at 5 a.m. just because it was a New Year’s resolution.
• We might enroll in a course, but it doesn’t guarantee us we’re going to finish it as well.
• We can even buy a full year’s subscription to the gym. However, how many times do we actually stick to going to the gym as often as we wish we did?

Don’t get me wrong. All these are great goals. They make great resolutions. Just the fact that you want to achieve a better version of yourself is awesome.

The main problem isn’t with the resolutions themselves. It isn’t even the fact that most of them seem hard to pursue.

The problem and why I say we’re all being a little hypocritic is that every year we know deep within ourselves that there’s a pretty high chance we’re not going to fulfill these goals.

We all know that we had a similar chance to reset the year before and we didn’t take it back then either. And we know that the year to come may just end the same: our desires not being met.

What should we do, then?

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a great thing to want to achieve a better version of ourselves. It’s as it should be.

What we should focus more on, probably, is to identify a more practical approach to fulfilling this purpose. One that can actually work and get us in touch with our goals.

Most of the time, we don’t choose goals easy to follow. We choose the ones that require a considerable amount of effort. The higher the effort, the more enjoyable the reward, right?

In this case, relying on a resolution made on New Year’s Eve as the sole source of motivation is a bit crazy. It can’t be enough. If that resolution is the only thing fueling our desire to succeed, we’re already going on a trip with a half-empty tank.

The way I see it, the only solution we have to actually see our New Year’s resolutions coming to a conclusion would be to stop obsessing about the ‘when’ (1st of January) and start thinking in terms of: ‘why’ and ‘how’.

• Why would I want to start waking up at 5 a.m. every morning? Is it my real desire or just a trend I would like to follow for a while? How can I achieve this goal without becoming severely sleep-deprived? Are there tips and tricks on this topic?
• Why would I enroll in this course? Will it help me in any way? How would completing this course positively impact my future?
• Why would I join the gym? Do I want to be cool or do I really want to be fit? How can I find a gym routine I actually like and stick to?

The point is, we should be searching for our true motivation. Our true desires. And if they don’t strike us until the 31st of December, they should be welcomed whenever they want to arise.

We should never restrict our creativity with due dates based on social pressure and stereotypes.

Takeaway

Making New Year’s resolutions isn’t something that should be eradicated. It isn’t an epidemic waiting to silently kill us all.

It’s just a thing that should never become the cause of extra pressure.

It still can be kind of enjoyable to think of different ways we want to improve in the year to come. We all have to admit it’s something we do without thinking through and for the sake of accepting the future as a chance to start over.

As long as our resolutions don’t have the 1st of January as a due date and an element of pressure, the sky is the limit and our imagination our best friend.

Yet, we should keep in mind we can better ourselves throughout the whole year. After all, the 12th of March is still in the same year as the 1st of January, right?

Originally published at https://clarinet-mouse-xp82.squarespace.com on January 7, 2022.