It’s every marketer’s dream time of year, New Years. Every year the whole of society buys into New Year’s resolutions that aim at changing their lives and being better versions of themselves. Since I was little, there has been a stigma around New Year’s resolutions and the importance of choosing them and sticking to them. While they were never necessarily enforced, they would consistently be asked about for the first few months of the year. Some of the most popular and sought-after resolutions include: dieting, losing weight, improving mental health, saving money and changing relationships with social media. Humans are historically averse to change and adaption to new situations. The issue with resolutions is how much they depend on the desire to change, consistency and self-discipline. At the start of the new year, everyone sets their goals with the best intentions, and around 80% lose sight of them by February.
The first thing I don’t like about New Year’s resolutions is their ability to make people feel like failures. Like, somehow, because you can’t complete a very large and daunting task within a few months makes you “bad” at accomplishing a goal. Habits take the brain 28 days to form, and we expect ourselves to make much more significant, life-changing goals in a short time frame. When we come up short on these achievements, we criticize ourselves for not doing what we set out to do. It creates a negative cycle time and time again when we try to make these new years plans and instead beat ourselves up when they don’t get followed through on. A negative outlook is then placed on how we accomplish tasks, which can damage our goal-setting and achievement down the road.
Another issue I have with New Years resolutions is specifically related to some of the most popular resolutions- eating better, dieting and working out. While it’s not unhealthy to want to change certain habits that make us feel unhappy or insecure, it is unhealthy to make decisions for a new year solely focused on losing weight or rapidly changing something to have a “new year, new me” transformation. Dieting and weight loss are some of the most negative and easily detrimental things sold to us through social media and the world of marketing year-round. However, the new year is always accompanied by gym membership deals, dieting plan sales and other promises of being skinnier and, therefore, better in the new year. It causes a harmful outlook on how we enter the new year and see ourselves.
New Year’s resolutions are just capitalizing on people starting a new year, wanting to turn a new leaf after the holidays, where we are sold over-consumption and gluttony. It’s one big cycle sold by the same companies and marketers who want to oversee and control the way we make decisions. If you want to change your life, it doesn’t have to be in January or any specific month. Deciding to change your life requires dedication and commitment to want something bad enough; nothing else can effectively make a goal stick.