It’s almost the end of January, and by this time every year, many of us have given up on our New Year’s resolutions and are already telling ourselves that we’ll try again next year. The mistake we make is the resolutions we choose are unattainable, like trying to get a six pack by summer or have a 4.0 GPA by the end of the semester. Our resolutions aren’t usually about the real changes we want to make in our lives, which, in the above cases, would be to exercise more and to form better study habits.
When we were in elementary school, our New Year’s resolutions were happy and attainable goals we wrote on gold stars and our teachers hung on bulletin boards. I remember writing that I wanted to be better about helping my parents with chores and letting my little sister tag along with me and my friends. These kinds of resolutions are simple and easy, and they require little noticeable effort. Now, our resolutions have evolved to be some kind of push or motivation to make a life-altering change.
Just because we’re older doesn’t mean our resolutions need to become more difficult. Rather than deciding on an upheaval of our entire lives that we plan to enact in just one day starting on New Year’s, we should pick tasks that can improve our lives without creating enormous stress. However, this doesn’t mean we can never accomplish our big goals or that we need to prioritize the easy ones. It just means we should break down the big changes we want to make into smaller ones so that each small step we take feels like progress toward the big-picture change we want to make.
Take one of the most common resolutions I’ve heard about from friends and family and attempted myself every year: changing one’s health regimen. This means something different for everyone. It could mean changing your diet, exercising more, or even taking time to relax and destress. The reality is, whatever this change is, it probably won’t happen overnight. But what I found to be most effective in changing my diet was to start by simply noticing what I was eating, holding myself accountable for what I ate, and ending the mindless eating I used to do when I was bored. For someone else, a small step toward better health could be going to the gym once a week and completing one small task, say running for 10 minutes or using the elliptical for 20, and then working up to a desired regimen, fitting it into the daily routine naturally. The accessible step is completely individual, so this won’t apply to everyone, but being able to complete one small step toward your goal will make you feel like you haven’t already failed at your resolution.
January first represents the start of a new year, but that doesn’t mean if you’ve already fallen out of the new habits you tried to start this year you should give up and wait for next year. If you’re waiting for a certain date to start achieving your goals, odds are you’re going to continue to find reasons to put them off. So if you’ve already decided you missed your chance to accomplish your New Year’s resolution, reconsider and try again! There’s no reason to wait for a particular day to take the first small step toward improving your life when now is as good a time as ever. Make a list of small steps, check things off the list as you complete them, and work toward a change. We may not get a gold star for setting our resolutions, but we can at least have the same satisfaction of completing them if they are attainable.