The year 2024 is coming to an end. Through everything, we have made it here! This is the time of year when we start reviewing how the year has gone and we start looking towards the new year. There are things we want to change or things we want to have stay the same. Many of us make resolutions to achieve these things. But are New Year’s Resolutions always the best answer?

Why We Make Resolutions

Usually, we’re inspired to make these changes in our lives for some reason or another. Maybe we want to get healthier in some way or change habits we feel are holding us back. For some of us, we want to set some kind of goal in a skill we already have. For others, they want to gain a new skill.

We make resolutions because we want to better ourselves in some way. But we also make them so that we can look back on the year and note if we’ve made positive progress towards something. It’s important to many people to feel as if they’ve done something good for themselves or pushed to become a better version of themselves.

However, we also put a lot of pressure on ourselves because of the social importance of New Year’s Day.

Why Many of us Fail

That pressure we put on ourselves is a big contributing factor! We focus less on why we made the goal or resolution in the first place and more on how we’ll feel at the end of the year if we fail. This just sets us up for failure because we’re being motivated by fear and shame instead of something positive.

Another reason is that many of us set vague resolutions and not measurable goals. What does “get healthier” really mean? This is so difficult to measure and understand that it can seem as if we’ve made no progress towards this goal, even if we have! It’s important to set specific goals because of this. The seeming lack of progress can be really disheartening for someone who is working hard towards something.

Negative Mental Health Consequences of Resolutions

When we “fail” at fulfilling our New Year’s resolutions, it can feel as if we’re just stuck. Some of us can feel as if we’ll never achieve anything, never fix a bad habit, or never realize our dreams. This is incredibly difficult to deal with, especially year after year, and it can lead to anxiety and depression in some people. These negative feelings and thoughts can be really detrimental to many people.

If we’ve failed at these same resolutions before, the anticipatory failure can also contribute to greater anxiety and depression. It can be something we dread every year and yet we still set the same goals and approach them in the same way. This generally isn’t good for most people’s mental health and it’s why many of us feel so badly by mid-March.

There’s also an issue with the “new year, new me” approach. This encourages us to make so many changes all at once that it becomes overwhelming. This isn’t a sustainable or long-term way of approaching making positive changes in our lives. Small, incremental changes make for much better and long-lasting effects in our lives.

Is it Possible to Set and Achieve Resolutions?

Of course! Not only is it possible in general, but it’s also possible to approach them in a healthier way that can contribute to better mental health, not worse. In next week’s blog post, we’ll be discussing how to go about setting New Year’s Goals as opposed to New Year’s Resolutions. Not that you need to set goals around a specific time!

That’s another important thing to remember. Sometimes the best time to start working towards a new goal is June 27th, May 18th, or even December 3rd. The point is that the best time to start working towards goals is the time that you’re ready to. Trying to push yourself to set and achieve goals based on a certain day of the year is just setting yourself up for trying to achieve something you may not be mentally ready for, which sets you up for failure.