The Problem With Resolutions

So it’s that time of year again! The time of year where we don our sparkly gay apparel, kiss our loved ones at the strike of midnight and vow to travel more, join that kickboxing class, run that marathon, start our business, and so on and so fourth screaming “Happy New YearS” to all the passerby. Yes, t’is the motherfucking season. The problem with these New Year resolutions is they usually give way mid February. We stop getting to work a half an hour early, forgo the quinoa, and those five am runs become a thing of the past. And before we know it, we’re right back to where we were December 31st of the year before.

According to Business Insider, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail each fucking year. That’s insane. But I mean, this information is nothing new, right? Instagram and Facebook  shame us everyday with memes about making and breaking new year resolutions. “Keep that shit to yourself!” your favorite influencers post and we all chuckle right along, feeling stupid for having made them in the first place.

But that’s where we are wrong. One should always embrace goals and personal growth so why wouldn’t the start of a new year signal an opportunity to start fresh and achieve something that we have always wanted to do?

So Let’s Keep That Resolution

 Let’s actually keep our resolution by making a new resolution.

This year’s resolution  is to treat every last day of each month like it’s December 31st and every first day of each month like it’s January 1st.

December 31st is always the day to reflect, to think about our lives through a critical lens: am I where I wanted to be at this time last year? What goals did I accomplish? What surprises (good or bad) occurred? How have I overcome adversity? What am I still unsatisfied by? From this reflection, we come up with our new big goal or “resolution” as well as a plan on how to achieve said resolution. Then we celebrate our successes, wake up on January 1st and begin executing our goal, hearts and minds feeling revitalized and full of motivation: “this is the year that I fucking crush it,” we say.

Now imagine those same actions and that same feeling every single month.

What if at the end of January-January 31st we sit down and reflect on our month, analyze it from a critical lens: asking ourselves, how did we do this month? Celebrating our accomplishments, making a plan for the next month, waking up February 1st with that same New Year’s day drive to do the things we said we were going to do. If we did this every month, where would we be in relation to our goals?

In Conclusion: Stay Motivated

Now having a “new year” every month is just one way of going about it: you can also do this same concept once a week or fuck it, once a day. But basically, don’t give up on you and your goals. There’s this quote: “Motivation is like a shower, you gotta do it daily.” Now although this quote doesn’t really go with the resolution of monthly resolutions (I hope we are all showering more than once a month) the concept still stands. Creating a resolution isn’t “corny” or “useless” or whatever else social media has led you to believe. It’s a great way to grow and actually be the person you want to be. It’s about not giving up and keeping that same energy as the year gets harder. Congratulating the progress you make and forgiving yourself when you fuck up.

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