Why do I always think this year I'll actually stick to my resolutions?
We all crave new beginnings. A fresh start. Maybe this is the year love finds its way to my door, or that business idea stops being just another note in my phone. There's something almost magical about the hope that newness produces – it's like a drug we can't quit. Mondays seduce us because they're blank pages. New Year's beckons like a siren because it whispers sweet promises of redemption, another chance to fix the beautiful disaster we call life.
So why don't we ever follow through on our resolutions? Why do we still end up with the same messed up life as last year's, maybe even worse? There are several answers to that. One could be that we just hate ourselves. Deep down, in some inner canyon of being, we hate ourselves so much we've made peace with our mediocrity. I'll be provocative and reframe that: Deep down, you hate yourself so much you're okay with your life. (Before you come at me with pitchforks – yes, this is a simplification, but you know there's a grain of truth here. It's not that your life is a dumpster fire, but you don't love yourself enough to grab the extinguisher.)
Another reason is simply "busyness." Let's call this what it really is – laziness wearing a business suit. The excuse is simple: I'm not lazy, just busy. Too busy to stick to my resolutions. Too busy to get my life in order. Busyness is a tyrant that rules over the lives of willing subjects.
For some of us, it's neither of the above. It's fear. We're too scared to change our lives. Too afraid to fail. There's this nagging fear that you'll keep failing until you die. Just fail and fail and fail until it's over and nobody cares. Maybe some people are just lucky. We all know that for every Jeff Bezos, there are 999 other people who did their best and still died insignificant. It's too great a risk to attempt. For others, life is simply good. Why worry about the future when you can enjoy the present? Desire becomes the enemy of true living.
Most New Year's resolutions are things we want to do rather than goals we want to meet. So you say this year you're going to lose weight, and by the end of January, you've already given up. Here's the truth: we don't do the things we say we want to do; we do the things that are easiest to do. Do we really have to follow tradition? Just because everyone else does it doesn't mean we should. Sometimes we fail to keep resolutions because we don't believe we can. We see the statistics, and our inner voice sings the song of defeat.
Don't set New Year's resolutions if you don't believe you can keep them. If you do, you're preparing yourself to fail. People who get shit done are the ones with the highest conviction. Nothing in your life will change until you're in enough pain that you just can't take it anymore.
Sometimes, we fail to keep our resolutions because they don't affect our survival. We will do almost anything to survive – just try killing a chicken or a bat (I know some of you are scared of cockroaches, so I'm suggesting something you can stomach), and watch it fight. Change happens quicker when our survival is at stake. Try reframing your goals as matters of survival. Change is unpleasant enough that we only embrace it when the alternative is much worse.
Don't give yourself a chance to back out. You can either be consistent or obsessive. You might not even need to do anything the first month – just consume enough until you become obsessed, turning your consumption into an asset. We've seen how consuming the wrong content on social media can lead to unhealthy obsessions; maybe we can harness that same power for healthy ones.
Want to know the secret to actually changing? Become obsessed. Not just interested, not just committed – obsessed. Want to be a writer? Drown yourself in great writing until words start leaking from your pores. Read until your dreams come with footnotes. When you finally put pen to paper, your writing might still be terrible, but you'll be too obsessed to care. You’re so immersed in the writer’s perspective, you see yourself as one.
Or here's a radical thought: start now. Not Monday, not January 1st, not when the stars align – now. Open a Google doc. Write one sentence – because why not now? Life is short enough that you don't want to spend any more of it not doing the things you want to do.
Give yourself room to fail, but not enough space to become complacent. However, failure can become a negative feedback loop – you fail because you've always failed, so you expect to fail. Create opportunities for small wins instead.
As you've probably realized, my answer to the question was dodgy at best, and for good reason. There's no definitive answer for why we don't keep New Year's resolutions; the best we have are behavioral estimations. We're all just trying to figure out how to be better while carrying the weight of who we are.
Here's what I do know: there's no cosmic law requiring you to set New Year's resolutions. If you want to, great. If you don't, also great. Just don't measure your worth by your ability to keep arbitrary promises you made to yourself when you were drunk on hope and fireworks. Life-changing moments don't check the calendar – they show up on random Tuesdays in May, on sleepy Sunday afternoons, in the middle of ordinary Thursday lunches. You don't need a new year to start a new chapter. You just need now.
And maybe that's the real resolution we should all make: to stop waiting for the perfect moment to begin.