Why New Years Resolutions Are BS

Now you may be wondering, Tiana ‘why in the world are you writing this? It’s no where near New Years. It’s the middle of the year. What are you doing?’ To which I would reply with simply, ‘I was thinking about this. I got angry. I had to share my thoughts with all of you.’

Anyway the why I am writing this is not the point. The point is that New Years comes every year and every year people choose to commit to being a ‘new me’. We all want to eat better, loose weight, read more, write more, drink more water, but the trouble is with all that good intention it’s easy to commit to it for a short while, but once you stop progressing it’s super easy to start regressing.

I feel like the time of the beginning of the year or the beginning of the month always seem like easy good times to think about and create goals, but as good as it is to have a plan to do better.. I think it might be more important to have a plan to keep going or to allow yourself to make adjustments when life happens. Changing small before changing big and being able to edit how you tackle your days as needed.

Figuring this out for myself was so crucial in my ability to keep bouncing back after giving in to temptation. I have given myself so many do-overs and changed things many different times until I had what I really wanted to do figured out. Right now, I know I have work M-F that doesn’t change. I know that I want to loose weight. That I want to be an author and never stop writing for this blog. I know that I want to be able to speak and read in other languages. Most importantly, I know I never want to stop reading.

These goals have become a set sort of aspirations for me. Every year at New Years, I try to create a way of me incorporating everything, but I always get the portion sizes wrong. When I stopped thinking of tackling goals as a specific thing that happens within a year or a month. When I stopped thinking about wanting a specific result that must happen in a specific amount of time or else I have failed completely and started to think about things day to day in the present. I began to make and see real progress.

Right now, I have begun to exercise. I write for this blog more then I ever have before. I’ve begun to really get a set understanding of Spanish (though I have a long way to go). I’ve written poetry everyday. I’ve began to write for my current WIP everyday and it is now at over 14,000 words which is something I’m very proud of. I have begun a mindfulness practice that has helped me stay calm and change my perspective. Plus, I’ve finally let myself have the time to actually sit down and watch a movie with my family instead of continuously watching YouTube video after YouTube video. My reading has been cut down to an hour a day, but honestly I have found that it is enough for me (plus I let myself read more when I find extra time).

I know that the way I do things now will change as I get older. I know that life will lead me to make time for more languages and more writing. One day, I hope that Writing would be my career. That instead of writing my 500 words in 30 minutes and having a goal to finish first drafts in 3 months might transform to me writing for an hour to several hours everyday and having it be my career. But for now I am making slow daily progress towards everything I would like to be. The important thing that it is progress. That it’s something I don’t give up on because I restart again and again each morning when I wake up. That I don’t look back on yesterday as success or failure, but look forward to what I can do today in this moment.

That is why I consider New Years resolutions to be BS. Yes they are inherently good. Yes for some they can even work, but for the majority of us changing our routines too quickly just doesn’t work. Allowing yourself to change gradually is super important. Figuring out what you want for yourself and making realistic small goals you can accomplish each day and being able to change them as needed without guilt is important. In this world there is no other time then now.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think about this down in the comments below. What are your dreams and aspirations?

-Till next time!

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