March 28, 2024

New Year’s resolutions

Every year people create New Year’s Resolutions for themselves. Some of these resolutions include; bringing grades up, financial decisions, spending more time with family and friends, becoming more organized or even just trying something new. 

However, most of the time people make the goal to be more healthy. This new health goal can range from eating habits to exercise and I don’t know about you, but this goal does not always last. As a whole, we spend about two weeks to maybe two months working on our resolutions before we realize why we weren’t living this lifestyle in the first place. 

The first day, we wake up, get ready, and are running out the door ready to improve. We are actually excited about this change. The encouragement we give ourselves; I’m going to do this, I’m determined, I’m going to stick through this. 

Three weeks later, we are sitting on the couch wondering why we are not working on our goals. And, a few things that go through are mind during this transition are; this is a good idea, why haven’t I thought of this before, tomorrow I will do more than I did today. The next day is about the same, but the repetition is too much for us to handle. 

Slowly, this change, or repetition, in our life is too much for us to handle. Resolutions, or goals, are for change in our daily routines, so when there is too much repetition we give up. We start eliminating it from our lives, little by little. 

I have realized that the New Year is about the goal to make goals. Remember in grade school when the teacher would ask the class to make a new goal for the year. The entire day was about making goals, and as an eight year old our goals were more about being kind to others. Why can’t our New Year’s Resolutions be more simple? Why do we insist on over complicating our goals. Still keep the health goals, being more organized, keeping up on finance. 

How are we to achieve these goals if we don’t learn and educate ourselves on the basics, such as; being kind to others, learning conversation skills, building up self worth, and learning to understand ourselves? 

A few weeks into our year we are sitting alone in our rooms wondering why we don’t want to go to the gym. Conveniently, our resolution is to go to the gym regularly. Then the memories start coming back. We were running on the treadmill worried that some super fit person is walking by, pointing their finger, laughing at how silly we look. 

We all laugh because it’s true. We are all afraid of people judging us on what we can not do. If our New Year’s Resolutions were to learn how to appreciate ourselves we could accomplish that goal to work out every Tuesday because we would be focused on our goal instead of our surroundings. This year I want to be more self aware. What about you?