New Year, New Me: The Problem With New Year's Resolutions

Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026! With the new year, many people feel like it's the perfect chance to “reinvent” themselves and make a change. In comes the infamous New Year's resolution. “I’ll go to the gym every day,” "I'll stop eating junk food,” “I’ll stop being so negative." These ideas are nice in theory, but what if New Year's resolutions aren't the great positive change you may think they are? 

The History 

The topic of a New Year's resolution is older than you think. In the second millennium BCE, the Babylonian New Year started at the beginning of the farming season in March. The Babylonian people held a spring festival called Akitu, which took place over 12 days, in which they made promises to their gods, or resolutions, to pay off debts or return favors in exchange for a peaceful year. This is the first example of New Year's resolutions in history, and we still make them 3,000-4,000 years later. Texts from the early 19th century mention the practice of making New Year's resolutions, for example, in 1802, the monthly Irish publication, Walker Hibernian Magazine, poked fun at those who made resolutions because they usually failed to keep them. By the 20th century, New Year's resolutions became a widespread practice, and in the present 21st century, they've kept their popularity. But something with a rich and interesting history can also be negative in the first place. In my opinion, the 21st century is where this practice should end.

The Problem 

The main issue I see in New Year's resolutions is this: they make us think we can only change ourselves for the better during a change in date, when in fact we can make positive resolutions any time. They also set unrealistic, “all-or-nothing” goals that are widely unattainable. They lead to stress, major anxiety, and negative self-image when they fail or don't work. You can make resolutions right now; you don't need a change to a new year to change yourself for the better. You can make positive decisions anywhere, anytime. They affect our perception of change and overall mental health negatively. We as a society must come to understand that change is not linear, or does not follow a straight, perfect line. Change is putting in effort every day and trying your best, which doesn't always look the same daily. And that's okay and perfectly normal. Your typical New Year's resolutions don't account for the everyday normal setbacks that come with life, like procrastination. In my personal opinion, we should do away with this old-fashioned tradition and start embracing realistic change in our day-to-day lives. 

The Solution  

Now that we've established you can make resolutions any time, here's how to set them and make them stick in 3 easy steps: 

1. Make sure your goal is realistic and achievable. 

Don’t set a goal like “I’m going to run 10 miles every day without fail!” This is crazy, and you know you'll skip a day or won't even do it at all. Set simple goals like reading a chapter of a book each day or only going out to eat once a week. These goals are positive and definitely achievable. 

2. Focus on the process, not just the end result.

This step can be hard. When setting goals and resolutions, people often just look at the finished product and don't examine and appreciate the process of actually doing the task, like the process of reading the book or doing the workout. Make sure you practice gratitude and understand that the most important part of a goal is the action itself, not just the outcome. 

3. Forgive yourself if you mess up.

The hardest part of goals is following through with them. People often procrastinate and skip out on days they are supposed to be reaching their goal, and that's okay! We're all human, we're not perfect. It's impossible to do a repeated action right every time without fail. Give yourself some grace and make sure you aren't getting mad at yourself and practicing “all-or-nothing” thinking. 

Following these steps will help you to make positive changes in your life and make them stick! 

Conclusion 

So my point is: I don't think New Year's resolutions are good or the positive thing many may assume. I think they are bad for an overall well-rounded mental health, and they also set a bad standard, with the thinking that you can only improve yourself at the beginning of the year. We can make changes in our lives for the better anytime, no matter what. They set unattainable “do-or-die” goals that can make us stressed. Let's leave New Year's resolutions in 2025 and say hello to 2026, a year of positive and reasonable resolution-making.