Now that we have started 2025, I’m sure many people will be setting resolutions for the year ahead. Perhaps we make these resolutions for the new year so that we can hold ourselves accountable to them. But in my experience resolutions hardly last a couple months, let alone a whole year. I don’t intend to demean anyone by saying so, but I do intend to convey that resolutions are meant to be long term targets.
Most of us have previously made New Year’s resolutions with the intention of motivating ourselves, starting afresh or reinventing ourselves. While all of these intentions are fully justifiable and perfectly valid, we sometimes fail to follow through on our commitments as a result of these. To further clarify, the statements in question are rather vague, allowing us to set broad goals thus creating unrealistic expectations. For instance. Reinventing oneself is an extremely complex process that entails a lot of time and effort. It’s understandable to want to make significant changes in a new year but by using misleading terms such as ‘new year, new me’ we set a very unattainable standard for ourself.
A year is a large period of time where one goes through numerous changes, if your resolution is too broad it’ll act as a discouraging factor in the initial phases of working towards it. Instead one could customise their resolution in a fashion where it’s specific enough to make your tasks clear and achievable yet flexible enough to accommodate hitches in progress. While it may seem obsessive or obscure to fulfil these requirements whilst drafting initial resolutions, doing so will surely increase your chances of achieving them.
Now once a resolution is set you are to face many recurring challenges. Throughout the year alterations will be made to your preferences, mindset, goals etc. Not to mention that your circumstances will affect all of the above as well. It is important that we be able to revise our resolutions when needed so as to not be discouraged when we can’t fulfill them. This is nothing but more reason for us to reconsider the way in which we make resolutions and what we let slip our minds when doing so.
Many take the new year as an opportunity to start afresh. It seems as though the first of January will commence the most productive, successful and exciting year of our lives. On the contrary, most are disappointed when the realisation strikes that nothing has changed. we often overlook the fact that nothing will change if you’re not going to actively change it. That being said, there is no right time to make changes. I acknowledge that spirits are high at the time of the new year and that we all want to see ourselves prosper, but in the same breath it is crucial to note that you do not need to take on all improvements necessarily in one go. Making many resolutions and burdening yourself is not the best approach for improvement seeing as it is an incremental process.
The general reaction to the failure of achieving a goal is to add it to the list of resolutions for next year, putting it off temporarily. I think that we put too much emphasis on the concept of New year, and while doing so we often fail to recognise that resolutions and goals can be set at any time. Be it the middle of the year or the end, it is never a bad time to pick up something and work on it.
So I’ll conclude by saying, being motivated for the new year is really great, but there are many things to take into consideration while preparing towards it. Whether you start by planning for a day or a week ahead, ensure that you give yourself levy and consider an incremental approach to progress. As much time as it can take to see vivid improvement with such an approach, adopting it can help us sustain throughout an entire year. So in 2025 I think we can all benefit from putting some thought into our resolutions, making them flexible and effective.
Commentaires