Read This Before You Make Another New Year's Resolution

Are you the type to make new years resolutions? Do you have one for this year? Have you ever maintained that resolution to the very end of the year? How many times have you made a new year resolution you have actually kept? 

I've thought about the idea of new year resolutions a lot. When you make a new year resolution, you're hopeful about starting the new year with a blank slate. You want to correct some of your mistakes from the previous year, entering the new year with the mindset of correcting old character flaws and forming and cementing new good habits along the rest of the year. 

Maybe you promised yourself you were going to quit smoking cold turkey. Maybe you said you were going to reduce your number of cigarettes gradually until the day you left it altogether and quitting smoking has it's hardship. Having a new year resolution to quit smoking? Not bad. Ambitious even. Some say it takes 21 days to break a habit. It's already an unhealthy habit to smoke, so quitting has benefits despite the effects smoking had on your body. But now that you know that your lifestyle needs to change for the better, you will gain a lot of benefits towards a better, consistent and healthy lifestyle. 

But do you really need a new year resolution to make the necessary change you want in your life, especially if it's a positive change? 

Once you reach a turning point in your life where you know that the old way wasn't working, you'll have to make adjustments. You have to plan and organise yourself aroung these changes. Because you know that sometimes change is necessary for you to evolve and grow as a human being. This isn't something that should be limited to take effect every January 1st. Change is something constant that happens in your life from the moment you were conceived to your death. If there is any positive change you want to make in your life that you want to be consistent with and take seriously, a new year resolution trivialises the importance of taking that step and sticking to it. 

It's probably the reason why you couldn't stick to some of your new year resolutions. As you lived through the year, the challenges of that decision were inevitable. You knew this when you were making the decision for that particular resolution. It just so happens that the unpredictability of life, put you in situations where you realised that the change was harder than the decision itself. So some uncomfortable changes made you relax on a promise you made to yourself. And just like that, last year went by and despite your tradition, you were not able to keep a promise to yourself about your own new year resolution. A promise you made to yourself with conviction, with the intention of improving your life yet you played yourself.

Do you intentionally make resolutions you know you won't keep? 

No.

The intention was important. Not being able to keep it is totally different from the resolution itself. Life is unpredictable and there is no clear cut way of navigating the curve balls thrown at you. Whether it's being in a social situation tempting you to smoke when you made that resolution to quit, or whether it's reminding yourself why you made this resolution. If the people around you already know your resolution, you're inclined to behave for the first couple of weeks to months. But whenever the challenges do come, you have a decision to make. Do you still want this to be your resolution? Can you change your resolution in the middle of the year? If you fail to fulfill this new year resolution, how do you feel about it? What do you think about yourself now that you have gone back on a promise you have made to yourself? How do you salvage failing the test of setting a goal for yourself that you know you could not achieve?

Does that make you a failure? No. All of this is dependent on the relationship you have with yourself. You may think it's about making a new year resolution which you have to maintain until the end of this year, but it's more to do with your relationship with yourself. Working on self care and self love will help you know your strengths, weaknesses, potential and limitations. You'll know your limits and when to take a break to avoid pushing yourself to burnout and exhaustion just trying to achieve this goal that is so personal to you. When you're more intentional about having that relationship with yourself, you will delay conceding, go back to the drawing board and strategise another way out of the barriers before you. Because knowing in yourself, you will be able to determine just how much that goal or goals mean to you. And that will motivate you to keep pushing through to achieve your targets. 

Seeing it as a resolution and looking at the entire year you have ahead of you will overwhelm you. You'll find yourself questioning the decision you made, and why you made that particular resolution, the one you wanted to make this year. If you want this new journey of self discover to count, you have to start with the basics. When it comes to the self, what goals have you set for the day? Are they achievable? How do you go about achieving them? What about your goals for the previous days? Are there any lose ends you have to tie first to work on your new targets? 

Taking baby steps and being able to accomplish even the short term goals will change your outlook on the bigger, long term goals. That way, whether or not you make a new year resolution, whether or not you make a big long term change this year, it's the baby steps that count. The fact that you are consistent in taking those steps make those long term goals achievable.

So... do you wanna make a new year resolution now?