Do I Believe In New Year Resolutions?

“Do I believe in New Year Resolutions?” 

Why am I asking this question to myself today? Isn’t this a simple yes or no question?

Well, not exactly. There was a time when talking about New Year Resolutions was in fashion. These days, saying “I don’t believe in New Year Resolutions” has become a trend. 

Before we discuss more about it, first, let me share something with you that made me ponder on this topic.

I recently hosted a virtual meeting in my organization. As an icebreaker activity, I asked everyone to share their New Year Resolutions. I got some interesting perspectives from the participants’ responses. 

Some of them shared that they don’t believe in New Year Resolutions. Whereas, some shared that they use the time to reflect rather than make a New Year Resolution. Also, I believe, many didn’t share their New Year Resolutions as they probably thought it was not cool.

Interestingly, the ones who did not believe in it even took pride in mentioning that. It sounded as if New Year resolution is an old-fashioned thing. Maybe, I don’t deny it. Furthermore, one person shared that New Year Resolution is a way to procrastinate. Yes, I agree with that too. 

Albeit, I somewhat agree with these perspectives, I am not opposed to New Year Resolutions – why?

What is a New Year Resolution?

I’d say, a New Year Resolution is a commitment we make to ourselves. It’s analogous to setting goals. Moreover, we all know that setting (right) goals is the key to a happy and successful life. So, it’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Why Some People Don’t Like New Year Resolutions?

There are three categories of people who are not into New Year Resolutions. 

The first are those who don’t need a New Year Resolution to start something. They are motivated enough to do what they want to do. Therefore, they don’t wait for January 1st to start. They start right away or as soon as they can. If we are in this category, we don’t need a New Year Resolution.

The second type of people are those who used to have New Year Resolutions at some point in their lives. However, they were not committed enough to hold onto their resolutions. So, they’ve found an easy way out and joined the naysayers community.

Now, the third and the most amusing ones are those who just follow the trend. They were the ones sharing their New Year Resolutions when it was in the trend. Later, they changed the side as the trend changed. They hear the first two types of people saying that New Year Resolution is not cool and they believe so without knowing the reason.

To Have or Not to Have a New Year Resolution?

Most of us know what to do to be a better version of ourselves. We need to keep learning, we need to read books, we need to exercise, we need to invest money better, we need to be a better leader, and so on. 

However, we do procrastinate due to one or other reasons. So, it’s up to us how we want to use the New Year Resolution concept. 

As one of my colleagues rightly mentioned, we often use it as an excuse to procrastinate. For example, say, we want to lose weight. So, we make weight loss a good candidate for next year’s resolution. Some of us even convince ourselves to eat whatever we want till 31st December. Needless to say, we must not do it. It’s not going to help us.

On the other hand, if we are already at the start of the new year, why not use the New Year Resolution as a good excuse to start with our long pending tasks? We can use this time to reflect on how we spent the last year. It is important to note when we reflect on something, we must come up with action items. These action items can be our New Year Resolution.

Conclusion

To summarise, New Year Resolution as a concept is good. Its effectiveness depends on how we use it. The change of year in the calendar is an event. So, we can use this event to trigger the actions which we have been planning to take.