By Taylor Navarro
‘New Year, New You’ — or whatever the saying is. As soon as the clock ticks over the midnight hour into January 1st, we solidify that promise to ourselves to be better, do better.
And then the chaos begins.
We sign up for an annual gym membership and grind ourselves into a pulp, we pull out the books and vow we will never see anything less than a 100%, we dye our hair, try new looks, makeup, skills, whatever it might be that will help transform you. And it’s going smoothly. For a while we see an upward slope of improvement and our goals start to manifest in our reflections.
Until Feb hits, and we’re burnt out.
Here’s the hard truth: only 16% of people who make resolutions actually stick to them. And worse? The likelihood of you being in that narrow percentage is even slimmer.
After January wastes away into the background and the world moves on from the New Year, we’re forced to retreat into our old ways because they worked— our old ways were ready for the pressures and stress of real-life, our old ways got things done, and our old ways were easy. The new way? The new you? Aliens. Not easy. And before you know it, it’s December 31st and you’ve got more regrets than you do achievements, and the next ‘new you’ that you construct in your mind is made of fragments of regret rather than the drive that once started you off. But even then, you don’t even realise you’re about to spiral down the same hole you did last year, the year before that, and the year before that.
And there’s one, simple solution: be realistic.
If you want to improve your health but have never touched the gym in your life, try once a week, not every day.
If you want to perfect your grade average but are sitting at a consistent 70%, aim for 85%.
And if you want to change how you look, pick one thing at a time.
By being realistic, you not only respect your capacity to succeed, but you give yourself the opportunity to impress yourself. Setting yourself up for failure will only trap you in a cycle of disappointment and strip the joy out of your life, but foster a horrible self-loathing and insecurity that you aren’t capable of doing anything good when you already are. You just can’t recognise it because of your unrealistically high expectations.
But also, don’t wait for the New Year to turn your life around. Don’t look for an excuse.
Do it now.
Do it in February.
So, let me ask you: what are your resolutions this year?
