It’s that time of the year again: “new year, new me“, “2018 is going to be my year“ and there in front of you is a newly written list of the resolutions that you really are going to follow through with this time. However, reality tells a bit of a different story. According to a 2015 U.S. News article, 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by the second week of February. So are resolutions really just a pointless phenomena that we should move away from or are they actually beneficial?
Based on the statistics and – let’s be honest – personal experience, resolutions sound good but in practice can be quite ineffective. The New Year seems to function as a dumping ground for all of the notions you have had about improving yourself throughout the past year. Whether it’s losing 10 pounds, reading more or eating more veggies, all of these goals are shoved into the back of our minds in a little drawer called “New Year’s Resolutions“ that is then opened on January 1st. Suddenly the pressure’s on. All of those changes that you have procrastinated are now to be committed to. Maybe you are one of the lucky people to diligently stick to the goals you have laid out for yourself all year but most of us are vast overachievers when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions. We soon come to the conclusion that if we weren’t meditating for 60 minutes daily on December 28th, we probably won’t be on January 5th either.
However, while there seems to be a tendency to overestimate one’s ability to change in a day, New Year’s resolutions are really not all bad. Yes, they may be cliché and yes, you probably will not evolve into the perfect human you have aspired to be for so long but resolutions provide us with a nice opportunity to withdraw from hectic day-to-day life to invest some time in reflecting upon the past year and deciding which habits and actions you would like to change in the coming twelve months. There’s excitement in feeling like you can put aside past mistakes and worries and begin with a clean slate. In a sense, that is what resolutions are for: creating a completely new version of yourself may be far-fetched but who wouldn’t mind a little boost in positivity that making New Year’s resolutions offers.
In my opinion, New Year’s resolutions are a bit like horoscopes: we agree that they are cliché but there’s something uplifting in reading through what is supposedly awaiting you in the month of May. Many of us are good procrastinators when it comes to changing habits so the New Year seems like the perfect time to set new goals in the sense that we feel ‘forced’ to actually take time to make a list of aims, which could have just as well been made in June. This is the aspect that keeps me sitting down every year to write my New Year’s resolutions. Although I know pretty well that I probably won’t stick to the majority of them, the feeling of trading 2017’s unnecessary worries and bad habits for a (sort of) fresh start is something that I look forward to when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s eve. A little cliché never hurt anybody and who knows — maybe you will become one of the 8% to achieve their New Year’s goals this time around.
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