At this time of year, many of us are reflecting on the past year and setting goals for the next. We are all eager to have a clean slate and make ambitious resolutions for the new year. We imagine the start of the new year as a magical moment that gives us the opportunity to have a fresh start and make our resolutions and promises come true. But does the “New year, new me” slogan really work?
Resolutions are important – but not enough
As the clock strikes 12 on December 31st, we are filled with optimism and excitement about the start of the new year. This year, it is more than necessary, after many having faced extreme difficulties from serious illness to losing their source of income to having to say goodbye to a loved one. In these first days of January, many resolutions are made; we are all hoping to turn over a new leaf and achieve the goals we set for ourselves. We even often say the slogan “new year, new me”, as if the change in the (Gregorian) calendar year had a direct impact on our lives. While the way we tie fresh starts and new promises to the start of the year is symbolic which can often help us take the next step, the phrase mentioned before is simply untrue. We are still the very same people with the same characteristics and habits, unless we consciously decide to change them.
We do not even have to go far for proof: it is enough to look at past year’s new year’s resolutions list. How many did we really accomplish and how many were left unfulfilled that had nothing to do with external circumstances like travel bans and other restrictions? How many of us joined the gym in January and forgot about our membership by March (at best)? How many of us enthusiastically started to journal and gave up before the end of the month? How many of us completely forgot about our resolutions until New Year’s Eve came and we sat down to make the exact same ones for the coming year? In reality, we are the only species that follow a strict calendar (and even we don’t all follow the same one) and try to convince ourselves that New Year’s Eve is a magical day and New Year’s Day is the moment it will all change for the better. We are all desperate to fill this day with meaning; we all put our hope on this one day, hoping that it will somehow turn us into this idealistic person who makes all of our resolutions come true. Nonetheless, we are bound to stay exactly the same as we were before – unless we are willing to consciously build up our own new routines and make them stick.
How to fill New Year’s resolutions with meaning
Before I am accused of being a cynical person with no faith or hope, let me assure you: I am all for New Year’s resolutions. I actually think they have a strong symbolic meaning and, as a believer in continuous self-development, I encourage all efforts towards that. I, however, do think that resolutions alone are meaningless – unless we find a way to fill them with meaning. The solution to that, at least according to my experience, lies in changing our patterns. That means that if we want to get any closer to making good on our promises to ourselves, we need to take steps towards overwriting our own old habits, inching our way closer to our final goals.
A good way to start is being SMART about our goal setting. The acronym stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely; this method makes us think twice about what we really want and brings us a bit closer to the “how” as well. Instead of saying “I want to get fitter”, setting goals such as “I will do two types of new exercise at least twice a week for 30 minutes” will not only give us a better idea of what we want but it will make it easier for us to monitor our progress. Having big overarching objectives is great for setting a general direction, yet they do little for us when it comes to finding our way to achieving them. By having the way of reaching our goals in mind when setting them, we are less likely to spin out of control and set overly-ambitious and, therefore, unrealistic expectations for ourselves that are a sure-fire way to “failure”. When we bite off more than what we can chew, we are quickly discouraged and abandon the idea fairly rapidly. If we are more cautious and realistic about what we want to achieve, it is much more possible for us to actually accomplish our goals, not solely because they are, well, more achievable but also because our drive is different. We are seeing ourselves succeeding early on which keeps us going. This does not mean we should aim low – instead, we should be SMART.
Also, as it was mentioned above, it is all about rewriting our own habits. For that, it is not enough to know where we want to get (aka. our New Year’s resolutions); we also have to know where we are starting from. Only once we have carried out a little soul-searching and self-analysis can we say what our situation is and identify the gap between our current reality and what we are hoping will be the “new me” by the end of the year. Just to offer an example: for an ex-marathon runner, committing to a 5K run each morning is probably not as big a deal as for someone whose longest run in the past 5 years happened when they were trying to stop a public servant from issuing a fine for illegal parking. However, it is not only the information about the gap between the “current” and the “desired” that matters: it is what we do with it. Instead of feeling sorry for our current state or giving up on the mission of changing even before we start, we should, once again, think about the “how”. And the answer to that, more often than not, is microhabits. Setting up small changes to our daily routine and solidifying them will go a long way – it is much more powerful than we think. Reading 20 minutes each day does not seem like much but before you know it, you have read a book a month (depending on your reading speed and the thickness of the book)! Substituting store-bought sugary donuts to nuts and veggies once a day is not a massive change to our overall diet but it is a great first step into the right direction of eliminating empty calories and reducing our craving for sugar. Here, the motto is: Every little helps. And even though we are bound for setbacks and bad days, once these new habits become routine, we are making a difference to ourselves without even noticing.
So, for 2021, instead spending ten minutes on setting goals like “spend less time on the internet” and “pick up a new hobby”, we should dedicate hours(!) to figuring out our priorities (and the “why” behind them), establishing SMART goals, setting up meaningful microhabits and seeing to actually making them stick. We can make them as detailed as we want, visualise them, reflect on them, discuss them, rewrite them… The point is to make them our own. And in case we still haven’t done so, there is no need to panic – even though it’s not New Year’s Day anymore and there is nothing symbolic about the 3rd January, it is never too late to make resolutions and fill them with meaning.
Living abroad as a millennial 