At the end of every year, people love to create New Year’s resolutions. And every year, I get a little bit more annoyed with New Year’s resolutions. Maybe it’s because I’m still in school and my year begins in September and ends in August, or maybe it’s because I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions. I don’t want to attack anybody who makes New Year’s resolutions, and this is a relatively small gripe I have for about the first month of every year, but I thought I would discuss why New Year’s resolutions (especially the most popular ones) seem destined to fail and why I steer away from them.
A big reason I don’t like New Year’s resolutions has to do with the content. Many resolutions fall somewhere along the line of losing weight, eating better, and exercising more. I would really like to question why a goal like losing weight is so highly prioritized in our society. Our culture seems to believe that losing weight is synonymous with being healthier or more attractive. Sure, if losing weight really is the goal an individual wants to achieve, then more power to them. But it makes me sad to see so many people make this resolution as a result of insecurities. Especially since these insecurities are so heavily influenced by the sexism and the oversaturation of so-called “perfect” bodies in our media.
I also don’t appreciate that companies prey off of people’s insecurities and try to sell us a bunch of products under the guise of helping us achieve our New Year’s resolutions. It is well known that many people fall off of their New Year’s resolutions as early as the end of January when the hype has died off. So people are looking for a product or service that is marketed towards helping us complete our resolutions. However, it is the habits we have that makes us able to complete our goals, not our possessions. So not only are companies using shallow, sexist ideals to increase business, but they can also make big bucks at the beginning of the year when people are afraid of failing their resolutions as they have so many years before.
This leads to the next reason I don’t like New Year’s resolutions: they’re not sustainable. Resolutions such as “Exercise more”, “lose weight”, “spend less” are all so vague, no wonder people (including myself, might I add) have a hard time making it to the end of the year (or past January). What does exercising more look like? How much weight do you want to lose? Spend how much less? What are you going to stop buying? I know some people are a bit more specific, but I’d argue that people have difficulties achieving New Year’s resolutions because we don’t even know what goals we’re making in the first place. Instead of “exercising more”, why not make a New Year’s resolution to jog once a week? Or instead of eating healthier, why not make it your goal to eat one meatless meal a day? Resolutions lack action, so instead make S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. So if you still want to take advantage of that new year motivation, take a look at how to make S.M.A.R.T. goals to set yourself up for success rather than failure.
So, assuming at this point that the resolution is truly sensible and attainable, I still question why people feel like they need to wait until the end of the year to make these goals in the first place. I find the beginning of the year is such an arbitrary holiday for many reasons. One, not everyone celebrates their New Year on January 1st depending on the culture or religious tradition. Two, January 1st doesn’t hold much meaning outside of the day we marked it to be; there’s no new season, lunar phase, or anything other significance. December 31st feels just like January 1st if you didn’t know the date. Yet, so many people wait until the new year to pick up abandoned resolutions from the year prior. Of course, we all want to better ourselves, but that desire is not limited to the first month of every year, especially when that time is already hectic with the holidays wrapping up and many of us getting back into the routine of work or school. We should always be looking for ways to better ourselves, and if we feel that we are lacking something in life, why don’t we take immediate steps to rectify it? Maybe it’s because we don’t realize it is something we need to change until the end of the year when everyone starts to nitpick themselves. Or, maybe it’s because when a goal is labeled as a “New Year’s Resolution” and we fall off our routine after the first month when our initial motivation wavers, we feel that we have failed our new year, and thus give up.
I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. But I do like setting aside time to outline what I would like to achieve and how to go about it. And since I have winter break to easily do this outside of school, it happens to fall around the new year. I don’t mean to write this article to poke fun at anyone who does make New Year’s resolutions. My hope is that readers understand that they shouldn’t beat themselves up for failing New Year’s resolutions, because they’re really hard to keep up. Instead, I hope we can all divorce the idea of self- improvement from the vague, arbitrary set up of America’s most popular New Year’s resolutions and instead create our own ideas that are tailored to our own unique lives. Happy 2019, make this your year of giving up New Year’s resolutions and simultaneously achieving everything you wanted them to be.