December 2023

photo courtesy of Danielle

By Valentina Hartleben

The year is coming to an end and with it New Year’s traditions are getting closer. New Year's resolutions are one big tradition that have a certain influence over all of us. The curiosity about what the motivation behind New Year’s resolutions is has led me to read and write about it. 

New Year’s resolutions are goals or good habits you want to start or continue making in the year ahead. Goals take time, and instead of taking small but effective steps towards these goals, we want to directly accomplish the big goal. According to Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist professor at Yeshiva University, “the New Year serves as a cyclical marker of time during which we reevaluate and take inventory of our lives.” This explains the urge we have at the end of the year of wanting to be better for this new 365 opportunities. According to studies, a majority of the resolutions made for New Year’s don’t stick. When thinking about making New Year’s resolutions we have to be reasonable, which a lot of the time we aren’t. It’s more normal for humans to want immediate goals, so instead of going for “taking a 30 minute hike everyday” we go for a “lose 10 pounds”  when writing resolutions. The key for achieving big goals is making a plan, a plan consisting of small goals. That is the best way for us to be successful while planning on becoming better versions of ourselves. 🐾