Why I won’t be making New Year’s resolutions...

MANY people like to start off the New Year by ‘turning over a new leaf’ and setting resolutions about how they want to improve themselves and their lives. But are New Year’s resolutions all that important, and are they worth making?

Firstly, resolutions can be made at any time of year, you should not limit yourself to only improving your life at one point in the year. The New Year itself is an arbitrary date, and the decision to make a resolution is arguably caused by existential crises around the holiday season. During this time it is easy to get caught up in it all and only later does the reality of balancing resolutions, like going to the gym, with work and so on, set in.

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Furthermore, New Year’s resolutions just pile on extra unnecessary pressure, at a time when you are likely already worrying about whether you are where you want to be in life etc. Why not wait until you feel you can manage an extra commitment in your life?

You are also often bombarded by emails from brands, adverts on TV and social media posts at this time of year, all piling on pressure to get you to set and achieve new resolutions, especially if it involves buying product X from their trusted brand. This pressure and obsession is arguably not healthy and could be damaging for some people’s mental health.

If anything, it is more painless to set goals outside of New Year’s, as then it is much easier to avoid comparing yourself to others, instead of everyone doing it at the same time at New Year’s. There will always be someone who is putting in more work towards their resolution than you, or whose resolution is more ambitious than yours, and this can be disheartening and often leads to people giving up. These comparisons are made worse by many people sharing their progress on resolutions like gym-going, dieting, running marathons, etc. on social media, all of which can make you feel worse about your own resolutions.

Lastly, many people do not even keep their New Year’s resolutions. A recent YouGov survey found that only 28 per cent of people who made resolutions at the beginning of 2022 kept all of them. 53 per cent of people who made resolutions said that they managed to keep some but not all of them, and 17 per cent said that they didn’t keep any of their resolutions.

53 per cent of people who made resolutions said that they managed to keep some

So, while New Year’s resolutions can be useful for some people, and the idea of setting resolutions and goals isn’t a bad one, the dangers (such as the extra pressure of comparing yourself to others) of doing it at New Year are so high that it is potentially more harmful than beneficial. If you are going to set yourself goals and resolutions, set smaller goals, and do them for yourself, not social media. And why not mix it up a bit and pick a random date?