New Year, failed resolutions

Every year, we put pressure on ourselves to make and keep ambitious resolutions, only for them to fall flat. 
Graphic by Keven Vaillancourt / Graphics Editor

At the beginning of every year, there’s a mad dash to reinvent oneself. For thousands of years, New Year’s resolutions have existed in some form for what seems like forever, trapping us in an endless cycle of yearly disappointment. 

What was at first for Babylonians promises to pay their debts and return borrowed items to the Gods has over time become promises of self-improvement to ourselves: go to the gym three times a week, wake up earlier, read a book each month, eat healthier, run a marathon… the possibilities are endless! 

With the pressure of new beginnings and fresh starts, we tend to envision the “best” versions of ourselves. 

However, I’m not sure I know a single person who has stuck to their resolutions for more than a few months, myself included. According to Forbes’ 2024 New Year’s resolutions statistics, the average resolution only lasts 3.74 months, with 22 per cent of resolutions lasting until February and another 22 per cent until March. In my experience, the big, ambitious goals I thought would motivate me eventually felt like self-sabotage later down the line.

There’s often pressure associated with making New Year’s resolutions, which are often centered around health, finances, and relationships. We believe that the bigger the goal, the better; we’ll become better people because of it. And so, we make our grand resolutions, which are easier to break than they are to make. 

After the pressure of creating the resolutions comes the pressure of keeping them, especially when we have big expectations for ourselves, I think this pressure makes us impatient with ourselves, despite many resolutions requiring a lot of time and dedication to achieve.

For example, many resolutions, whether it be going to the gym or quitting smoking, require discipline for them to actually come to fruition. Discipline isn’t a skill that’s easy to come by, at least for most people. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, or a year for that matter.

Discipline is just as important as the goal itself because, without discipline, our goals are unattainable. Self-discipline isn’t a skill that you can master overnight, so it feels a bit like setting yourself up for failure, which may leave you with feelings of incapability and self-doubt, eventually abandoning the goal entirely. 

In the past, this impatience with myself led me to drop resolutions that were important to me — the classic “I’ll just try again next year.” The issue is that it’s just as hard to pick up those resolutions again later in the year because they are still too big and intimidating. It’s unlikely that we’d suddenly decide to have patience with ourselves, especially when the year is “running out.”

A New Year’s trend I’ve taken a liking to is making a short list of small “ins” and “outs,” or “valid” and “cancelled” for my more chronically online folks. The “ins” are things you’d like to incorporate into your life, while the “outs” are things you no longer want to carry into the new year with you, whether it be a mindset or habit. 

It feels less intimidating and more specific, to me, at least. It’s honestly encouraging me to make my own lists this year. 

New year, new me?

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