New Year’s Resolutions: Time to Give Up
We’re a week into the new year and your drunken mistakes following the drop of the ball are still fresh in your mind. You haven’t gotten all the glitter out of your hair and you just found some confetti in your bra. Some of your decisions from the new year festivities are going to stay with you for a while. But one isn’t. Your new year’s resolution. You vowed you would make a change. You planned it out and set goals and you really want this year to be different than last year. Different than every other year. But it won’t be and that’s why it’s time to defenestrate your foolish resolution.
The very first thing you need to understand is that no matter how practical you think your resolution is, it’s a stupid resolution. Your life is a reflection of your values; the things you actual care about are the things you invest your time in. If you’re a stoner it’s probably because what you really value in life is Doritos and chilling on the couch by yourself. If you spend your time entirely engrossed in your job then you probably don’t actually care about all those other things happening in the lives of your friends and family. You do these things because of who you are and who you are is because of what you do. Declaring that you’re going to make some monumental change to the way you live this year is a denial of your core values.
But that’s not even the biggest reason to renounce your foolhardy resolution. There’s one big problem with your resolution that’s been sitting in the back of your mind this whole time. That one thing you knew from the beginning. That nasty, detestable thought. The nagging issue of commitment. You’re not really going to follow through. You know you’re not because this happens every year. It’s not like you make vows to implement dramatic change in your lifestyle every couple of months and actually practice self control. You want to lose weight but it took you 10 years to put on the weight to begin with. You should reasonably expect it to take a long ass time to take it off. Accept that this is just who you are for right now and radical change doesn’t happen over night.
I’m not advocating that you stop trying to be a better person or live a better life. I want you to be honest with yourself. I want you to be comfortable with where you are in your life even if it’s not perfect. However, I also want you to give up on your new year’s resolution and start making goals for realistic change all the time. January 1st isn’t some magic date that instills you with super human motivation; you have to take small steps forward every day. It’s silly to spend your whole year slacking off and then spend the first week of January pretending like you are dedicated to self improvement. That’s 365 days of denial! This sort of thing takes practice. Start treating the whole year like it’s time to make a resolution and you’ll probably see huge changes in your life.
If you want to lose weight or stop smoking or get that promotion this year then you should start with a goal. Make it a one month goal then reassess it and update it at the end of each month. Make your goal measurable and keep track of your numbers week by week so you can tell if you’re working in the right direction. Get a journal where you can write your goals, your progress, and your failures. Oh by the way, you’re going to screw up a few times! And you’re probably going to sit on the couch alone and eat ice cream out of the carton at least once this year. It’s okay because there is always relapse in any behavior change. But you just put that in your journal and keep on trucking toward your goals.
Now that we got that out of the way we can get back to celebrating the new year the way it was intended: Getting drunk and shamelessly making out with the person standing closest to you at midnight.