New Year resolutions: Why the hype?

How will you go into 2019? Most people set themselves resolutions that they, more often than not, break one or two months into the year. It could be to eat more healthily. It might be to exercise more often. It might be to not use profanities so much. It might be to spend more time with family and friends. Or it might be to set a career goal. Whatever their goal, a lot of people start out meaning well and fully intending to stick to their resolutions throughout the year but many people do not.

So I have a question. Why do people beat themselves up when they fail to keep to their resolution? Well, you know, resolutions, by their very nature, are something you’ve often never done before but have decided to try. Or something that you tried before and failed. You might have failed for a number of reasons. Maybe the resolution required you to do something that was out of your normal routine, like finding the time to exercise when you have a very busy schedule with work and family. Or maybe it meant making a serious change in your lifestyle, something that can be extraordinarily difficult to achieve when you live with your families. After all, you cannot impose your resolution in terms of meals, for example, on the rest of your family. That wouldn’t be fair to them or to you.

Sometimes, a resolution requires you to be more mindful of your actions or to alter your mindset. For example, not using profanity every time you get angry with something or someone is about being more mindful. All this is hard to do if you are so ingrained in your habits. Resolutions, therefore, by their very nature, are hard to keep. No wonder people can’t stick to them.

Maybe the resolution you set was just too hard and instead of giving up on it altogether, maybe the next best thing to do would be to tweak it later in the year to a more manageable goal. So, please, don’t beat yourself up about not keeping a resolution. I’ll wager no one keeps it.

When the end of December approaches and we’re on 29th or 30th December, some people look forward to 2nd January with a lot of hope for what positive events it could bring into their lives; they are literally upbeat and on a mental high that, come January, something exciting or good is going to happen for them. There’s nothing wrong with that. I was like that for years. I don’t mean to drag everyone down but I strongly believe that those who put themselves in this false sense of positivity for January are doing themselves a disservice. There’s nothing wrong with being positive for the New Year but the danger is they set false expectations so when January rings in and things seem stagnant or worse, depression sets in.

To be honest I think this New Year’s Resolution thing needs to be dispensed with because it puts a lot of unnecessary, added pressure on people, something they do not need. Moreover, everyone you know begins to ask whether you’d set any and what they were? If you tell them you hadn’t, it sort of makes you look dull and not doing things in the spirit of the season.

Another tradition that tends to get a tad on my nerves is this wishing people a Happy New Year. Emails are flooded with such good wishes accompanied by those two-line quotes of inspiration. One wonders until what date one should keep saying this to people. Is it the first time you see someone? What if you see someone for the first time in February or March? Do you still wish them Happy New Year? Or is it just during the first two weeks of January? Who knows?

The French have an especially cumbersome task of greetings for people both towards the end of December and in the New Year. Firstly, they tend more to wish people Happy End of December and then when January comes around they change to Happy New Year. Furthermore, they have to say these greetings to every person they meet, even those they do not know. For example, if they are getting into a lift and see people they do not know, they must wish them a Happy New Year. Not doing so is actually considered rude. That’s a lot of pressure…

Happy New Year.