Surprise! If you haven’t yet noticed or fully processed it, it’s 2023. (Don’t worry, if it still hasn’t hit you, I don’t fully believe it’s a new year until April). And of course, with a new rotation of 365 comes the influx of New Year’s Resolution all over social media. But in fact, 80% of New Year’s Resolutions are dumped and old news by February. So how does this passion for change quickly become a distant memory?
The first to go is your motivation. The idea of becoming a new person with new habits sounds great, but the steps to actually achieve it tends to be more difficult than anticipated. The hours, days, and weeks of the new year silently flutter away and you remain stuck in your normal habits, forgetting that you even had the resolution to begin with. How can we beat this? The first step is to eliminate the temptation of going back to bad habits. If you want to limit your screen time, create a large distance between you and your phone by placing it in a different room. Use the current motivation you have now to prevent slip-ups in the future.
But another silent killer with new years resolutions is becoming busy. I get it; juggling schoolwork, sports, and downtime can be difficult, especially when procrastinating. So, when life gets to be too much to add the new year’s resolution into the mix, people deprioritize their goals and focus on the immediate necessities. One way to beat this is to carve out a specific time in your schedule to work on your goal. It doesn’t have to be hours on end, but even 15 minutes per day can help you establish these goals into habits.
No matter what your New Year’s Resolution is, if it is important to you, then it is most certainly worthwhile. Take the time to make 2024-you proud of what you did this year and how you can do even more the next.
