Let me set the scene — it’s the night of Jan. 31, people rejoice around food, drinks and grapes, stealthy wearing their different colored underwear as part of the superstitious New Year’s tradition and getting their countdown voices ready.
The clock strikes 12:00 a.m. and the everyday human being, the average Joe, wrinkles up their skin and sheds it like a snake.
Revealing a brand new, determined, confident, emotionally and physically glowed up functional human being.
Ready to take on the world as they shout out their cliché, outdated, used-every-year Instagram caption “New Year, New me!”
Give me a fucking break.
If the ability to shed your old skin and become a new person every new year was possible, I would be rich. I would be traveling every other month and I would have straight A’s and no stress or time management issues.
The solutions to all your problems, the determination and courage you seek to start off a new year is not at the bottom of that champagne glass you cheered with.
How has this been deemed a worthwhile ritual?
New Year's resolutions are pointless.
Setting up these scary expectations to live up to for a whole upcoming year, the point of a new year is that it’s unpredictable.
According to an article by Time Magazine, 80% of people fail to keep up with their New Year’s Resolutions by February and only 8% of people actually stick to them the entire year.
People shouldn’t need the excuse of a new year to change or reinvent themselves
Why not start working towards achieving your goals in mid-July?
New Year's is made out to be so whimsical and it’s based on this naive assumption that everything in your life will change when the New Year’s Eve ball drops.
New love, new adventures, new money, let’s be honest, honey — your Tinder swipes are going to be the same.
Sure, I can’t deny that I’ve fallen victim to the soft-seduction of the promise of a new year.
But it’s always ended in disappointment, nothing has ever felt different when midnight comes around.
There have been times when my sadness still sticks around, when things don’t go my way or when temporary feelings seem never ending, or times when I’ve felt absolutely nothing.
You never really know what’s going to happen, how can you believe in a resolution without a guarantee?
I’m happy being free of that pressure to make a resolution or claim a new me.
I’m happy knowing that I don't have to immediately lose that weight or immediately try to gain a bunch of wealth and burn out.
I’m happy with being messy past midnight.
I’m not the only person that feels this kind of pressure. According to an article by Forbes Health, 62% of people say they feel pressured to make a New Year's resolution.
All the goals people usually use as resolutions are essentially just the things they wanted throughout the whole year prior.
Still, somehow people think that because we turn the page into a new chapter, everything will be different.
To lay it out for you plain and simple: You’re not going to do those things!
Yes, some New Year’s goals are achievable — you’re going to graduate, maybe get a promotion and maybe you will find love or make some big money — but it’s sure as hell not going to happen through any New Year’s wish or resolution.
Sometimes the resolutions are things that people do have complete control over, but it requires self-accountability.
If you say “I’m gonna go to the gym” just go to the gym, and hold yourself accountable.
If these resolutions really matter to you, and you’re really hoping for change, then enforce discipline on yourself and show strength.
My philosophy for setting and accomplishing goals is this: if I really want it, I'll do it, I'll go after it or work towards it until I get it.
Ultimately, I’m not going to do it (better myself or accomplish goals) so that I can post Instagram pictures and rub it in people’s faces. I’m going to do it so that I can look back at my own growth with pride.
Unless I really want it, I won’t go after it and I’ll stay that way until my passion for the goal grows.
I don’t need to reinvent myself this 2024 — I work and grow at my own pace, I won’t get stuck in the Venus flytrap that is New Year’s resolutions.
My new Instagram caption is: “New Year…tbd.”
