I hate to be the one to burst your bubble but New Year’s resolutions are not a thing. Or at least they shouldn’t be. Honestly, let’s be real here — what is the success rate for New Year’s resolutions?
According to Statistic Brain, only 8% of the American people successfully keep up with their resolutions but 45% of the American people are making resolutions every year.
If no one is successfully sticking to their resolution then why are they even a thing? Why start something that you can’t finish? This doesn’t mean that we should sit around all day and not have any goals or aspirations in life, but just because it is January 1st does not mean you need to start your life over in full force. In reality by January 2nd you are going to be back to your old ways anyway, so what’s the point?
There would be a higher success rate in resolutions if we stopped making them so driven by New Years. You can start a resolution at any point in the year; it does not have to be the New Year. The whole point of our lives is to grow and to set goals throughout our time, not just on the first of the year when everyone is trying to do what the social norms say they should be doing.
If we haven’t realized this already, we probably should; the social norms of society are never normal. And if you really think you are going to lose five pounds a week for the next 52 weeks or completely cut pizza out of your diet for the next year because everyone around you is coming up with these crazy resolutions and you feel like you have to also, just save yourself the trouble. It’s not going to happen.
So instead of making some insane resolution for the 1st of the year because everyone else is, focus on living in the moment and realizing change can occur at any point in the year, and that is when it should occur, in the moment. In that moment midway through the semester when you are about to skip that class for the third time, make it a resolution to attend class the rest of the semester. Or when you are home again for the summer and find yourself arguing with your mom yet again, make a resolution to be kinder to her.
Your life doesn’t stop at the end of the year and start over again new at the beginning of the following year. There is always room for improvement. Goals and resolutions are ongoing; they can be created in any moment.