Five Reasons Why Not to Make New Year’s Resolutions
We did it! We survived 2020 (at least somewhat) intact. OK, take a slow, deep breath and appreciate that we’ve made it to 2021. Now, let’s turn our attention to a very normal discussion item when we reach the end of a year. New Year’s resolutions: should we make them or not? Contrary to popular belief, I say not. In fact, I’ll provide you with five reasons why we should not make New Year’s resolutions, we should make every-day resolves.
As some of you already know, I’m a huge advocate for self-betterment and on-going improvement. That is one reason why I went back to school in my 30’s and obtained my MBA for the sole purpose of it being a goal I’d set for myself. Find out what you are passionate about, and pursue it wholeheartedly and unapologetically.
This is where the New Year’s resolutions fall flat for many of us. I remember making a flurry of goals at the end of each year, enthusiastically pursuing them the first few weeks in January, then getting burnt out and abandoning most of the goals I had set. And then another year passes and suddenly it’s the end of December and time to set resolutions again. And repeat... This is a common narrative for people, with 64% of New Year’s Resolutions being abandoned within one month. Even more discouraging, less than 10% keep these resolutions more than a few months. Personally, I have found it much more effective to tackle a smaller number of goals, all throughout the year. Tackling these in a more bite-size fashion makes it less overwhelming and increases the likelihood for success. This is why I suggest that goal-setting should be an every-day, on-going activity in life, not just a once-a-year practice.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work
1. The impossibility of perfection. At its core, this isn’t completely a bad thing. Trying to put our best foot forward is healthy and can help us reach our goals. However, perfectionism has some underlying challenges, for example: avoiding something due to fear of making a mistake, unrealistic expectations, heightened pressure, getting stuck in a loop of never good enough so never done. Those are only a sampling of the reasons why perfectionism shouldn’t be the expected standard.
No one is perfect, sooner or later mistakes always happen. Many of us are innately perfectionists, even though we may not realize it. This can have the effect of derailing our resolution efforts, because the first time a setback occurs, it can feel like we failed in our resolution. This is one why people get frustrated and quit after the first setback. Sometimes “good enough” truly is good enough.
2. Trying to do everything, all at once. This is the classic “biting off more than can be chewed syndrome”. It leads to frustration and burnout. I learned this first-hand. Honestly, I’ve always been one of those people who enjoyed a thousand different things and wanted to be amazing at them all. What I found out (sometimes the hard way) is I can’t be good at everything. I know… bummer, right!?
No, we actually don’t have to do everything today:
Life moves fast, but often we’ll find we have more time than we think. We have enough time that we don’t have to try to do everything at the same time.
Opportunities come and go, but they’re never gone forever. Our opportunities in life are not actually “once in a lifetime” gigs that movies and celebrity society would like us to believe.
Life is cyclical. To everything, there is a season. For example, while today may not be the time for you to tackle one of your goals, it may be in five years.
If we try to everything all at once, the typical result is we get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all. Instead, schedule your goals to reasonably align with the current circumstances in your life. This organically leads to our next discussion point, the importance of planning.
3. Not enough detailed planning.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons our goals fail is because there is no plan. We have grand aspirations of where we want to go, but no plan to get there. Typically, when embarking on a road trip, one of the first things most of us do is pull up the route on Google Maps or our preferred GPS mapping solution. Most of us don’t simply start driving and hope for the best as we “wing it.” Fortunately, we live in an age where there are lots of tools (online and off-line) to help us along the way on the road trip to reaching our stated goals.
If you are comfortable planning digitally, there are many resources available online. I recommend the app Strides. It offers flexibility and details for a variety of goal-setting: 1. Habit (reinforce good, eliminate bad) 2. Target (end-goal targets, with easily interpreted pace lines) 3. Average (build healthy, long-term habits such as sleep, exercise, water intake, etc.) 4. Project (detailed goal planning and management). This can help set you up for success and keep you on track to achieve your goals.
Conversely, if you prefer to tackle this non-digitally, there are also many solutions available. I recommend the High Performance Planner. There are daily, weekly, and monthly pages with strategic tools to help you plan, prioritize, and achieve your goals more effectively.
As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Arming ourselves with the proper tools is an excellent way to help us experience a greater likelihood of success.
4. Setting society-driven resolutions instead of passion-driven goals. It’s time to stop aligning our aspirations to what Instagram, TikTok, our family/friends, society tell us our goals should be. Personal resolutions need to be just that – personal to you, and personal to me. Your goals need to be your own.
It doesn’t matter if every member of your family became a lawyer and you want to be an elementary school art teacher. You don’t have to become a lawyer, just like they don’t have to become an art teacher. That is their journey, this is yours. Neither is better nor inferior, because each of us was born into life and given the free will to make our own decisions. Some will disagree with me, but I do not believe there is anyone figuratively or literally pulling the strings of our life. I believe that we each pull our own strings.
I acknowledge we are all born into vastly different circumstances and levels of privilege, which can make success more challenging for some than others. In America, it is a commonly acknowledged sentiment that being born rich helps success come more easily, but it comes with no guarantees. Conversely, stories abound of some of the richest and most successful people who grew up financially poor – the rags to riches stories we innately root for.
5. Real, lasting change takes time. This one doesn’t require much explanation, because it is intuitive. Our society’s current mentality is to want everything now, but that isn’t sustainable. True change will take time. This is supported by the importance of setting SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound. Long-lasting change takes hard work and commitment. It is a decision we must continue to make, each and every day. Some research suggests that up to 40% of our behaviors may be habit-based. As intimidating as the prospect may be, change is possible. It’s not an overnight process, but it is worth it.
Every Day is a Chance to Be Better
These are five reasons why we shouldn’t make New Year’s Resolutions, we should make Every Day Resolves. Every day we awake, we will need to make the decision to be better and to live that day accordingly. To reach long-term satisfaction with our lives, one can set our goals or make these types of decisions for us. As Steven Maraboli said, “This is my life… my story… my book. I will no longer let anyone else write it; nor will I apologize for the edits I make.” I promise to you, day by day I intend to write my own story, and I hope you are feeling emboldened to write your own. Are you with me?
Questions, comments, or just need to chat? Send me a direct message via LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.
Cheers until next time,
Crystal
