New Year’s Resolutions are a time honored tradition. You make them, you go all in, and you give up a month later. Everyone has plans to completely change their lives, to become the best version of themselves via a complete uprooting of every last habit, but the question is:
Does anyone actually succeed? Or, can we rework our resolutions to make them more achievable?
I’ll use myself as a case study. My resolutions this year were to live more holistically—via learning more about my body and incorporating health consciousness into every aspect of my routine—to create a study routine, and to prioritize myself, rather than people-pleasing. So how’d I do?
- LIVING HOLISTICALLY
- I would say I’ve made progress on this, but not as much as I’d hoped to. The little changes I’ve made include beginning to take more supplements than just a multivitamin—I’ve added fish oil and a probiotic—as well as learning my body’s cues for when I’m starting to get tired, hungry, thirsty, etc. I’ve been avoiding screen time early in the morning, drinking more water, exposing myself to more natural sunlight, and practicing better posture. I had hoped to cut out more unnatural fragrances and strong-scented chemicals, as they’re a massive migraine trigger for me, and learn more about natural healing and how to incorporate it with western medicine, rather than instead of it, but much of the time I’ve had for research has been taken up by class and work. But some progress is better than none!
- CREATING A STUDY ROUTINE
- This is one that I’d say I’ve failed at more so than I’ve succeeded. I tried, certainly, and I did very well during the month of January: I did my homework immediately after getting back from class, and touched up on anything I needed to study in the morning before I went to class, and I was consistent. Unfortunately (or, more like fortunately, for the sake of my bank account) I got a job that began in February, and it threw me completely off my schedule. I am now back to doing my work right before I go to sleep, and struggling to find time to remember things properly. A prime example of a failed resolution.
- PRIORITIZE MYSELF
- How does one truly measure how much they’ve been prioritizing themselves? How do you make a goal of this in the first place? I’m not sure, but I know I’ve been doing my best. Prioritizing myself, for me, is a very uncomfortable process. It involves saying no to people, speaking up, and being direct, none of which are easy or enjoyable in the slightest. Prioritizing myself will feel worse at first, but be good in the long run. This year, I have started trying to talk to my advisors more, get directly involved in advocacy work, speak out about my beliefs, tell my friends when I’m struggling, and I haven’t done it every time, but I have put in the effort to do so a little bit. Every little bit counts.
So what does this mean for resolutions as a whole? Are we all really doomed to fail every endeavor we start in the new year? I don’t think so. I just think we need to reframe how we think about them.
The ways in which we change don’t happen overnight, with the change of the year. You don’t turn your life upside down in one fell swoop. You are able to change things through small habit changes, deliberate yet manageable ones, and you can do it any time of the year. You can always change as a person.