10 REASONS WHY NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS ARE OVERRATED – It’s about that time of the year again when people start making promises to themselves both in secret and in the open that they would end up not keeping at all.
For some people, it’s the best way to start a year and move on from the past one while for some, it’s a whole ball of garbage and seems overrated. But is it really?
The best way, I mean. It’s become routine for almost 80% of the world’s population to write down or make a mental note of all the things they’d either love to achieve or the habits they’d try to change or situations they’d love to turn around or maybe even goals they’d love to achieve in the new year. I’m guessing they believe the magic of the new year or just something about the new year would change things for them and help them achieve these.
But wait a minute, isn’t it just like shutting your eyes to sleep and waking up to a new day that the sun rises quite like it did the day before, even though the previous day was the final day of the past month? So what new magic is there to change things? Believe me, I don’t mean to be a ball buster or a kill joy but what’s the major difference in having already set goals you’d love to achieve and making new year plans just because it’s a new year?
Well, you wouldn’t need rocket science to deduce that I’m one of those people who think new year resolutions are very much over-hyped and overrated. I’ve got a few reasons to back up my claim. Feel free to criticize these reasons but you’ve got to do more than criticize me, you’ve got convince me to change my mind although I don’t think you can.
Stick with me and I’ll share my 10 reasons why new year resolutions are overrated:
1. Everyone’s Doing It:
It’s quite unfortunate that we live in a world where the silliest things become trends and everyone sheepishly goes along with them without really taking thought as to why they have to be a part of it. I think everyone in the world decided to follow the new year resolution trend because they felt it was vital to make new plans to start off the new year and begin anew from where they stopped in the previous year. Well I say that’s not a good enough reason.
I’m not saying it’s stupid to make new plans to correlate with the new year but some resolutions are just not plans one should believe they have to start off their year with. Most of these resolutions are made in a hurry and are not very well thought out, but because everyone’s doing it, they wouldn’t want to be the odd men out, so they follow suit. One major reason to avoid making them and focus on what you have at hand and where you’re going to. Everyone around you is probably doing it for the same reasons as you, so why join them?
2. New Year Resolutions Kind of Limits You:
New Year resolutions tend to limit a person. Don’t worry I’ll explain how.
After making resolutions, we tend to do things only in ways that would foster our ability to keep these resolutions and accomplish these goals. This makes us have a routine kind of life in the subsequent days that follow. Quite mundane, don’t you think? We carefully and purposely avoid some of the things we’re used to just so we wouldn’t risk messing up our resolutions. Some of the things we’d normally do to achieve certain goals in the past, we avoid and most of the time, we cannot come up with new and different ways to go about them and end up losing out on what we would have scored on a normal day. It’s sort of like having horse blinders on, it only allows us to see the things the blinders are focused on and nothing away from them. I assure you, life with blinders on, is certainly not free living and limits you up until the day you decide to take them off.
3. New Year Resolutions Are Completely Irrelevant:
Yes, new year resolutions are seem to be irrelevant and useless. I’m probably one of those who’d never ever be convinced that they have some effect on a person’s life and also are instrumental to an individual’s personal, professional and social growth.
I believe every individual has personally set goals in their lives that they look forward to achieving each year and slowly work towards achieving these goals. Each day takes them one step closer to accomplishing them depending on how much work they put in and the initial planning they’ve already put in place. All they have to do is to easily zero their minds in on making each day count and be instrumental to achieving these set goals. What then is the use of making new resolves in the beginning of a new year under the guise that one needs to accomplish new goals with the start of the year and a little before it ends.
Oh you argue that it isn’t irrelevant to decide to let go of a few habits, well it isn’t, only when the decision’s made at any other time asides the start of a new year. Believe me, you can easily work towards quitting habits at any time in a year not necessary because you want to start off a new without them.
If it were that easy, there’d be no liars in the world today.
4. We Always End Up Breaking Our New Year Resolutions Sooner Than Later:
I stand to be proven wrong but I don’t think I have ever seen anyone who has successfully kept to his new year resolutions and accomplished all to the tee. I’d seriously love to meet them cause they would be perfect human beings. At the beginning of each year, billions people make certain promises to themselves and promise to keep them from that point to the far end of the year; they always end up not keeping these promises. But aren’t promises made to be kept? Isn’t that why they are called promises? I’ve never heard a resolution end this way; “I’ll try my best to keep to these resolutions but if it doesn’t work out, then so be it ” lol, that would be one heck of a resolution. What’s the use of making these resolutions then, if you’re not going to follow through?
5. It’s majorly procrastination:
Many times than less, new year’s resolutions are made in a hurry usually at the last minute when the fireworks hit the sky. When not written down, they come off like little pleas to do better, be better and achieve better than the previous year. All these come in a split second when the year is almost minutes in.
So, It is more like a ceremonious chant in one’s head to put to rest the feeling of imperfection and inadequacy the past year probably left in them and start the new year with fewer or no sins. Everyone knows that hurried decisions have very short life spans and will definitely reach nowhere. Then for those who actually write them down, they mostly put together elusive ideas from previous years or recessive habits they’d love to quit and thoughts they feel should have been reality by now and try to psyche themselves into achieving these written plans by pushing themselves a little bit more. But then, a few weeks later, the lists are thrown aside and forgotten.
6. It Leads To A Bad Year Start:
Just like new year resolutions limit a person, it also makes them start their year the wrong way. The beginning of each year is always the best time a person takes a step back and tries to understand his environment more than he did the previous year and be poised to do things differently so as to achieve more than he did in the past year. But with new year resolutions and plans already in place, the person ends up chasing after the new plans he/she has outlined for themselves faster than when he should have executed plans. They normally lose sight of the bigger picture and end up starting the year off doing the right things at the wrong time or even the reverse. When this happens, the year is already ruined even before it began and the person has absolutely no choice but to start all over from scratch when he should have been achieving good returns.
7. New Year Resolutions Changes One’s View Of Life:
This is also sort of like saying it makes a person view life with blinders on which is undoubtedly full of limits. The thought of having new year resolutions to keep makes an individual think a certain way, and this train of thought is only beneficial to him as he looks out for his own self. He always loses sight of the bigger picture and tends to work one sided steps towards achieving his goals and carefully avoids treading previously familiar parts for fear of going back to his own vomit.
You do not even need me to spell out how limiting that is. With one sided thoughts come one sided actions and one sided goals are ended being achieved. This is simply because the train of thought on the person’s mind would be of one thing only, which is to end up keeping to the year’s resolution which certainly doesn’t end well.
8. New Year Resolutions Are Always Done At A Bad Time In The Year:
New year resolutions would have been awesome if they were done at a certain time of the year, say, February, when they Christmas craze and the new year jitters have all died down and all you’ve got left are your sanity and some new drive for the new year. Instead, it is usually done at a time when everyone’s busy making merry and worrying what the new year has in store for them. A time when feelings are all over the place and all everyone is thinking about is being better than they were before instead of real personal, social and professional growth.
I mean, who makes decisions at a time when it’s best to be a foodie????
9. They Are Always Made As A Means For Redemption:
Majority of the people who make new year resolutions do them as a means to right their mistakes and find much sought after redemption. Most of the resolutions I have heard people make, and the few I thought about making in the past sprung mostly from previous mistakes made in the past. They always feel the new year should start with a new kind of life, one without you dragging the past along, which is actually a really nice idea but mustn’t be at the beginning of the year. You can always let go of things for your own good and not because you feel it’s sane enough to start a year with new redeeming thoughts.
10. New Year Resolutions Are Mostly Filled With Unreasonable And Unachievable Plans:
Everyone who makes or has made a new year resolution always aims to top his previous ante and push himself/herself a little be more. So they mostly say things too wonderful for their minds to even comprehend or achieve.
Most of these resolutions are just too ridiculous to think even think of. And they do so to fulfill the school of thought which urges people to think bigger than they normally do and hope to achieve more. Instead of thinking considerably big as is understandable, they go way above normalcy and plan for things they wouldn’t even achieve in reality. They always expect a huge miracle to happen and bring these plans to life. Then they sit on their butts and wait for these miracles to come through. Yes, without even putting in any work.
Do you think new year resolutions are not overrated? Share your thoughts with me in the comment section below!
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