Why New Years Resolutions are Garbage

Let's be real: for the vast majority of us, New Year's Resolutions are garbage. This is for a plethora of reasons, the foremost being that for most people, they simply don't work. According to a recent study, the most comprehensive ever done on the New Year's Resolution phenomenon, only about 19% of those who undertake a resolution will complete it according to their satisfaction. For everyone else, it's a one way guilt-trip into Blue Monday, statistically the saddest day of the year partly because of the guilt of our failed resolutions for the future.

But the fact is, most New Year's Resolutions are set up to fail. For example, let's take a look at some of the most common resolutions according to Time Magazine:

• Lose Weight and Get Fit

• Quit Smoking

• Learn Something New

• Eat Healthier and Diet

• Get Out of Debt and Save Money

• Spend More Time with Family

• Travel to New Places

• Be Less Stressed

• Volunteer

• Drink Less

What do you notice? They're all pretty open-ended, aren't they? Lose weight and get fit—sure: how much weight and what constitutes "fit"? Learn something new—okey-doke, what and when? Eat healthier—what constitutes "Healthier"? Be less stressed—sounds great. How?

What people often don't realise about New Years Resolutions is that goal-setting is a science. There are real, concrete steps you can take to maximise the likelihood of reaching your goals, but simply tossing them out with no planning or forethought because of something arbitrary—like a new year—isn't one of them.

This is good news! It means that if you've failed at reaching a New Year's Resolution ,it's not because you're lazy, or bad, or an irreparable failure. It just means that you probably weren't setting goals in a way that was likely to result in achieving them. But we can rebuild them, we can make them stronger! Here's how.

Step 1: Embrace Constant Goal-Setting

This is an important one - goal-setting should be a constant in your life, not something you do once a year and then forget about. They don't have to be huge goals - not at all! You're striving for consistency, not volume. If you want to write every day, make it "write something every day, even if it's just a paragraph or even a sentence." If you want to exercise more, make it "take a walk around the block", to start and build up from there.

There are a few benefits to a system of constant goal-setting. Firstly, when New Year's rolls around, you won't have a huge pile of "to-do" goals waiting for that one arbitrary date to be tackled, meaning you're less likely to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of goals.

And secondly (and I think most importantly), if you fail to meet a goal one day, it's not a once-in-a-year opportunity that you've utterly ballsed up and will now have to wait an entire other year to rectify. Instead, it's just a day. And tomorrow is another one. You can try again, over and over, forever until you get where you want to be.

A bad day isn't a failure, it's a work in progress.

Step Two: Let's Play Categories

It's helpful (for me at least) to split my life-goals into different categories for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, so that I avoid setting too many big goals, in too many categories at the same time, and secondly, so that I can keep track of and evaluate my wins a little easier and make sure things are, on the whole, balanced. Maybe my work isn't going so well, but my social life is going great. Maybe my love life could use some work, but my fitness is knocking it out of the park on the regular. Balance!

Here are some categories I recommend:

• Career/Work/Side hustle
• Social life
• Family/Partner
• Personal passions/Hobbies
• Mental health/Self care
• Physical health

Now listen, 'cause this is important: no one expects you to be kicking ass at all of this all the time. Except Donald Glover, but forget about him. All you have to do is make sure you have some plan to progress in all of these fields, even if it's something small. So maybe you want to find a new job - big goal! Couple that with something small in your personal passions pile - maybe that's just setting aside time for your hobby once a week. Try to find this balance throughout and remember: no goal is too small. You're in it for the long haul and progress is made in millimetres.

Step Three: Keep That Shit to Yourself

Setting goals is exciting (at least if you're a giant nerd like I am), so the temptation is high to crow your new and exciting aims from the rooftop. Resist that temptation, my friends.

You might think that telling people will help keep you accountable. Not the case! In fact, according to Science Daily, the fewer people you tell, the more likely you are to achieve your goal.

Why? Well, like all cognitive processes, setting goals involves brain chemistry! When we choose to do something and we achieve it, we get a tasty little hit of dopamine as a reward - BUT you short-circuit that process if you tell people about it before you've actually achieved your goal.

In other words, you'll get the dopamine hit - but not the drive to actually achieve the goal. No bueno.

This is not to say you shouldn't tell anyone at all. If you can tell mentors or close friends who may be able to support you and keep you accountable, then by all means tell them - but don't let people know unless there's a concrete reason for it. And when you finally do achieve your goal, you can tell the whole wide world to celebrate - in fact, you absolutely should!

Step Four: Create the Concrete Steps That Will Get You There

Setting a goal is pointless unless you simultaneously create a plan to help get you there. You can stand on your balcony screaming "I AM GOING TO DO THE SPLITS!" for as long as you want, but unless you make a plan to actually make that happen, forgive me if I have little confidence in your ability to drop it down low.

Underneath every goal you make, there needs to be a support system. If your goal is to do the splits, your support system is stretching every day, or three times a week, or whatever you feel you need to do at your current level to get you where you want to be.

If you don't have actionable steps, it's not a goal, it's a pipe-dream. Plan accordingly.

Step Five: Identify Your Obstacles and Find a Workaround

Proceed with caution with this one. If you spend too much time identifying the obstacles in your way, it's easy to obsess. Keep it simple. Let's take our example above. Say you want to do learn how to do the splits, but your obstacle is that you're not particularly flexible or maybe you've never even stretched before.

That's okay! The first thing you'll want to do is find a stretching routine. Then decide how much time you want to devote to your stretching every week and set it aside. You'll want to give it a go a couple of times, finding tutorials on YouTube or online so you can understand proper form. And hey, presto, your obstacles have been dealt with.

A note on timelines: Timelines can be tricky. On the one hand, they can be very motivating. On the other, if, for whatever reason, you don't meet them, they can lead to shame spirals and feelings of failure. This is why it's always been my preference to keep goals constant and flexible. That way, if you do happen to fall off the wagon at some point, you can always get back on, aiming for your goal with small, steady increments of progress, dealing with obstacles steadily as they arise. Plus, you can celebrate the small wins on an ongoing, constant basis - always a motivator!

Step Six: Learn to Love the Process

Let me tell you a story about one of my goals. I used to be fairly flexible as a kid and teenager. Then, because I stopped stretching too much, and because I injured myself fairly often in my early twenties, I lost a lot of it. I had a hamstring injury and a groin injury and back problems—I was a mess!

Despite all this, when I started pole in 2016, I decided I wanted to get my splits back.

There were a lot of obstacles. First, I had to see a physiotherapist about my injuries, then I had to do all the rehab work. After that, I had to deal with constantly re-injuring my hamstring, eventually figuring out it was a lack of strength. Weight training consistently dealt with that. Then, I tried a variety of stretching routines and classes to no avail, before finally finding one that worked for me.

I plateaued several times. But I eventually got my splits flat on the ground again.

It took me six years.

So how did I stay motivated to reach for my goal? First and most importantly, I learned to love the process. We all make goals because we want to improve, and we often forget that whether we reach them or not, we're doing something good for ourselves. I learned to love stretching because of how good it made my body feel. Eventually reaching my goal, by the time I did, was just the cherry on top. I had already improved my life, and I felt better in my body than I ever had before far before my splits touched the ground.

This is how it should be with any goal. Focus on the good it's doing you, and learn to celebrate the small wins along the way. As with so much in life, it's about the journey in the end, not the destination.

In Closing: Embrace Constant Improvement

If you take away just one thing from this article, let it be this:

You are not a failure if you haven't reached your New Years Resolution. Not this year, or any other. What you are is pure, raw potential that can be tapped anytime. You don't need to wait for a special occasion to start doing something, however small, that is good for your mind, body or spirit. You can begin today and you can rest whenever you need to - the road will always be there for you when you're ready.

You've got this.

If you enjoyed this article, I would love it if you'd follow me on Twitter at @LizzyRippAuthor and give my stories a wee "heart" here on Vocal. As a freelancer, your support means the world. Xo - Lizzy