With the new year freshly underway, it’s easy to create resolution after resolution for ourselves, no matter how unattainable. Whether it be completely cutting out carbs, dropping your fourteen current “situationships,” or running a marathon, the sky is the limit for setting goals that exist for the sake of self-improvement. As the popular saying goes: “New year, new me.”
Resolutions, although challenging, aren’t entirely impossible to succeed in. It’s completely feasible for you to be able to leave your old “situationships” in the past, and it’s completely possible to train for and run a marathon. Unfortunately, New Year’s resolutions don’t often end in success. A Forbes Health survey conducted in 2024 suggests that persistence in keeping up with a New Year’s resolution lasts about two to four months in total. Only about 34% of people make it over the four-month mark before completely abandoning their personal projects. We all aim for the stars, but without a method of getting there, we’ll always remain tethered to the ground.
The idea of goal setting always reminds me of a conversation that I’ve had over and over again with a very close friend. To condense a long “yap session” into one idea, we’ve concluded that remarkable people will always be remarkable, no matter what situation they are put in. People who are meant for success will always find it, no matter how circumstances prevent them from doing so. Often, these are the people who take the time to refine their skills and make good habits. They also have appropriate confidence and discernment when making personal decisions for their own betterment.
It’s incredibly easy to come up with excuses for why you had to drop your resolution, and what’s even worse is coming up with a counterfactual response for them. A counterfactual is a conditional “if…then” statement that concerns the outcomes of hypothetical possibilities. A counterfactual that has to do with failed goals may sound like: “If I had only practiced more, then I could have gone pro.”
This line of thinking doesn’t usually come to a helpful conclusion. Most of the time, it isn’t even logically valid. Of course, there’s always the possibility that putting more effort into a skill will make you better at it. The idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything is commonly accepted. However, anyone can put 10,000 hours into a single hobby—it only matters that you do it. We cannot allow “if” statements to occupy so much of our headspace that we don’t redirect our energy to pursuing something new. Soon, “if I had only practiced more” will turn into “if I had only spent more time doing instead of thinking about it.” As Taylor Swift said, “Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.” Past failures are what we leave behind in the past. We don’t want to keep wasting the time we have now on hypotheticals. We have the time to make change now.
It’s easy to think that nobody else is struggling. But the truth is, most people don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Already knowing what you want to pursue is a huge advantage in life. The road to self-actualization always starts with the first step. You will never reach the end of your journey if you keep backtracking. Quit the counterfactuals and make intentional progress toward completing your resolution.