This article is 6 years old

Opinion

Resolutions Remain a Recipe for Failure

Illustration by Clara Hollowgrass

“New Year, new me!” “This year is going to be my year.” “2018 is mine.” “This year I swear I’m going to work out.” “I’m leaving that behind in 2017.”

The passing of January 1 is always filled to the brim with claims like these. The new year provides an opportunity for people to reinvent themselves and set goals for the next twelve months. Well we all know how well this works out.

No one in this world is perfect, and self-improvement is an opening for reflecting on who you are as a person. However, many people argue that you should seek self-improvement as you identify it, not once a year because you feel the magic of January 1.

There’s a lot to be said for this. In our lives, we are driven by what we want, what is the best option for us, our own self-interest. Setting goals every year is a good thing, but checking in on them every month is even better. It allows you to update, shift, or change your goals as life moves on in the twelve long months that comprise our calendar. It would be unrealistic to assume that your life will be exactly the same as it was at the beginning of the year or that you can keep chugging along and making green smoothies every morning for breakfast even though you’re totally sick of them by this point.

Face the facts: you change a lot as person throughout the year, and it isn’t reasonable to set goals for yourself when in eleven months, you could be a totally different person.

But … whatever, right?! New Year’s resolutions are just things people say to give excuses for the last 365 days and give a little hope for the next. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself because I’m still waiting to hear of someone who has remembered their New Year’s resolutions come February 3.

This brings us to another point: why do people set New Year’s resolutions if they aren’t even going to follow them?

We value a tradition that involves people being honest with themselves and taking a deep look on the inside to cure their own problems through resolutions, but to be blunt, that also means we value a tradition that involves hypocrisy. Being honest with oneself would mean recognizing that you won’t even remember the promises you made to yourself on New Year’s, so why bother anyway?

This isn’t to say that setting goals for yourself is a terrible idea, only that the way a lot of our society goes about it is wrong. If you’re going to set a resolution for the upcoming year, try to remember it and look back once every couple months and make sure that your goals match the person you’ve become. If you can’t even pledge to remember them, do yourself a favor and skip the whole process.