Stop Making New Year’s Resolutions

Ah yes, the start of a new year has arrived. What a wonderful time to scramble and find that journal you write in once, perhaps twice, a year to make some New Year’s resolutions. Maybe this year you want to spend more time with your family, lose weight, or save more money. Maybe you want to do all of those and more. The choices are endless! How will you ever make a decision? Well, let me save you some time by telling you that making New Year’s resolutions is your surest path to failure. 

For many people, making a New Year’s resolution is just one part of the festivities that come with the beginning of a new year. I mean, why wouldn’t it be? It’s a wonderful and optimistic way to get your life back on track after realizing you wasted an entire year doing nothing. While there is nothing inherently bad about setting goals for yourself, the attitude in which people generally approach their resolutions holds them back from making the progress they hope for.

The plan for New Year’s resolutions seems to begin even before the new year as people reflect and pick out their failures from the past year. Because of this, people look to the new year as an opportunity to right their wrongs and accomplish all the things they discarded last year. With high expectations, they dream up an ambitious goal (oftentimes the same one they made at the beginning of last year) and end up falling into the 80% of the population who abandon their resolutions by February. New Year’s resolutions simply don’t work because they are constructed in a manner that is not sustainable. Unlike meaningful goals that are set with intention, New Year’s resolutions are created impulsively and artificially under societal pressure, leaving people more depressed than accomplished by the end of the year when they fail to meet their goals.

So why do we continue making resolutions every year? Even when we realize the low success rate of New Year’s resolutions, there’s a sense of optimism attached to the idea of a new year, a fresh beginning, that motivates us to improve our lives. Every year, we say to ourselves, “This will be the year,” hoping more than believing that this time our resolutions will finally stick. 

Unfortunately, optimism is not the only factor that will bring about the change we want, and in some cases, societal pressures tend to be the driving force rather than optimism. The truth is that New Year’s resolutions have become a mere trend, a “tradition” inflated with hype and social expectations. When the time of year comes, we feel a frantic urge to face the uncomfortable activity of introspection, not because we want to but because we feel compelled by tradition. Think about the last time you saw your friend or favorite YouTuber post about their New Year’s resolutions. Did you not feel like you were behind? Did you suddenly get a spark of motivation to create your own goals? This might be one of the reasons those resolutions fail every year. Instead of emerging from genuine desires to self-improve, New Year’s resolutions are an artificial product of conformity, making them difficult to sustain. Rather than setting goals because of engrained tradition, we’d be more likely to succeed if we were motivated by an authentic, personal wish to improve our lives in some way. 

Even if the practice of making New Year’s resolutions is not unhealthy in itself, they tend to have a shaming factor. One of the major issues is that these commitments often revolve around self-deprecating behavior resulting from social norms. In 2023, Forbes found that nearly 48% of U.S. adults had improving fitness at the top of their priorities, along with 34% who hoped to lose weight and 32% who wanted to refine their diet. The popularity of going to the gym and losing weight is closely related to diet culture and strict body standards. It seems as if the majority of resolutions encourage negative and uncomfortable changes over positive ones. Gyms and weight-loss programs tend to lower their prices around this time of year, using it as an opportunity to gain new customers and encourage discussions around diets and appearance. While we should certainly prioritize our health and fitness, we need to do them for the right reasons. 

At the end of the day, it’s not about setting big goals at the beginning of the year because the calendar and society tell us to. Rather, it’s about taking time to reflect on our values and habits as a chance to improve our lifestyle. Nothing prevents us from making small changes to our lives in a sustainable manner. No one says we must start at the beginning of the year. This year, instead of stressing over those unachievable New Year’s resolutions, pursue small but meaningful improvements throughout the year and integrate them as habits into your daily life. 

Sources

Forest, Natalie. “The Shackles of Societal Expectations: What is up with those New Year’s Resolutions?” The Los Angeles Tribune, 7 January 2024, https://thelosangelestribune.com/2024/01/07/the-shackles-of-societal-expectations-what-is-up-with-those-new-years-resolutions/#:~:text=Society%20often%20dictates%20what%20success,desires%2C%20values%2C%20or%20priorities. Accessed 16 January 2025.

Gourguechon, Prudy. “Why You Should Ditch Depressing New Year’s Resolutions And Do This Instead.” Forbes, 2 January 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/prudygourguechon/2019/01/01/why-you-should-ditch-depressing-new-years-resolutions-and-do-this-instead/. Accessed 9 January 2025.

Lloyd, Maddie. “2024 New Year’s Resolutions: Nearly Half Cite Fitness As Their Top Priority.” Forbes, 12 January 2024, https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/new-year-resolutions-survey-2024/. Accessed 9 January 2025.

Mental Health UK. “New Year, New Me? Why New Year’s resolutions can be unhelpful, and how to set healthy goals.” Mental Health UK Blogs, 2 January 2024, https://mentalhealth-uk.org/blog/new-year-new-me-why-new-years-resolutions-can-be-unhelpful-and-how-to-set-healthy-goals/. Accessed 9 January 2025.

Moniuszko, Sara. “New Year’s resolutions often don’t last. Here’s why they fail and how to keep them, according to an expert.” CBS News, 31 December 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-years-resolutions-tips-why-they-fail/. Accessed 16 January 2025.

Plecic, Maybelyn H., and Scott Lamb. “Why I Stopped Setting New Year’s Resolutions and What I Do Instead.” Medium, 14 December 2024, https://medium.com/be-reaching-hearts/why-i-stopped-setting-new-years-resolutions-and-what-i-do-instead-24fb1173298c. Accessed 16 January 2025.

Pugachevsky, Julia, et al. “How to get unstuck in 2021: Your guide to small changes you can make to feel happier and healthier right now.” https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/learning/feeling-stuck-in-life-tips, 15 January 2021. Accessed 9 January 2025.

Vinney, Cynthia. “The Psychology Behind Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail.” Verywell Mind, 1 January 2024, https://www.verywellmind.com/why-new-years-resolutions-fail-6823972. Accessed 16 January 2025.