By the time you are reading this, at least 27 days will have passed since New Years. If you are anything like me or the thousands of other well-intentioned people who attempt and fail at sticking to their “New Year’s Resolution,” you will have already forgotten any resolutions you made. At the very least, you probably haven’t been making good progress on them.
Learning a new language in 2022… How is that going for you? Stopping your bad habit of procrastinating… How was studying for finals? Finally trying to lead a more active life… Did you ever end up joining that gym or adopting that new workout routine?
Now, I am not bashing people who make New Year’s resolutions. I am among the thousands of people who make them every single year thinking that this year will be different. I cannot count the number of times I have downloaded, deleted, re-downloaded, and deleted apps like Duolingo in an attempt to finally learn a new language. Not to mention the hobbies that I’ve started and dropped around this time of year … Looking at you, embroidery and crocheting.
Every single year, Jan. 1 hits and I suddenly forget about all my past failures. The sentiment of the new year being an opportunity for growth and new beginnings is one that I really enjoy. Unfortunately, it’s also one that I now understand isn’t guaranteed to happen. While the new year could be thought of as a clean slate, this does not really mean anything because though the calendar is changing, we are not.
As we move into the new year, many things will be different. But just because all this change is happening doesn’t mean that we are going to change too. The growth that we are able to undergo in life often happens gradually. The experiences that impact us occur over time and sometimes without us even realizing they are affecting us. Only by appreciating these experiences can we actually make goals that allow us to become the “best versions of ourselves,” not the date changing from one year to the next.
January is an arbitrary date to focus all of our goals and wishes for improvements on. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to making resolutions just on Jan. 1 for the new year; by doing so, we limit our ability to actually grow and adopt beneficial habits throughout the year.
I’ve started to associate the new year and resolutions with starting homework. Just like how I tell myself that I was going to do X, Y, and Z as soon as the new year hit, I tell myself that I would start my homework at a specific time.
Picture this: You get home and take a small break. You check the clock to see it’s 3:32 p.m. and tell yourself that you will start your homework when it’s 3:40 p.m. You return to scroll mindlessly through your phone and realize that you missed the time limit you gave yourself. It’s now 3:43 p.m. You simply cannot start homework at that time, so you extend your break to 3:45 p.m. so that you can start your homework at a more “right” time. This process then repeats and continues on as you continue to miss the time by a minute or two.
This is me after school every day. Have I ever learned my lesson? No. I still continue to do this just like I continue to set New Year’s resolutions.
It’s pointless to determine that I will do something at a specific time and no sooner or later because there is nothing holding me accountable and actually encouraging me to get started. Just as I push this time back and procrastinate on studying or doing homework, I often find myself completing none of my goals and resolutions on the basis that “I can always do it next year” just because I thought of a new goal on Jan. 3 instead of Jan. 1. This ends up being even more harmful because I start to make the New Year’s resolutions I have unrealistic and unattainable because I only have this opportunity to make long-term goals for myself.
In the end, I have realized that New Year’s resolutions are not as helpful as we would like to believe. On the contrary, resolutions often push us into an all-or-nothing mindset that discourages us from adopting a more progressive and growth-focused lifestyle throughout the year because it ends up limiting us despite the new year seemingly representing new beginnings.
Despite everything that I have said about New Year’s resolutions in this article, I actually have just a single easy one for 2022: Stop tying my goals to times.