On new year resolutions

THE start of a new calendar year often comes with the attempt by many to review and amend their lives through the annual January ritual of new year resolutions.  People come up with lists of those things and actions and habits they want to drop and those they want to adopt in the new year as part of their efforts at re-jigging their lives and setting themselves on a new more productive pedestal. Yet, the point is that this has become more or less just a ritual that would be repeated at the beginning of another year with many of the so-called resolutions not being followed or even remembered during the course of the actual year. It is said that only a tiny fraction of such resolutions get attended to with the larger percentage not even worth the time expended on coming up with them in the first place.

Corpse of Ondo deputy governor’s daughter shaved before burial ― Pathologist

Let us face it: a University of Scranton research shows that less than 10 percent of people who set new year resolutions actually achieve them; and that more than 50 percent of the people who make resolutions couldn’t even remember what those promises were when asked later in the year; while 4 out of 5 people do start the year with clear intentions about making a new start in some aspects of their lives, about 92 % of these intentions end up failing.  A similar research shows that even with the abundance of new year resolutions to change behavior at the beginning of the year,  25% of the people making the resolutions are already returning to old behavior within the first week of the year. Apparently, when it comes to new year pledges for a better life, what happens in January stays in January; it rarely makes it farther than that.

To be sure, some are necessarily cautious about new year resolutions. For while the beginning of a new year may sound like the ideal time to set about creating transformation and change for the better, the idea that New Year’s Day or the beginning month of the year is special is simply an illusion because when one is truly ready to pursue (new) goals, any moment is and could be the right moment. It wouldn’t matter whether it’s January, April, or November. In truth, there is nothing special about the first day of a year  or any other set aside date to make amendments for self-improvement, and believing otherwise could indeed be a great set-up for a fall. For in a way, when we don’t get started on this or that day, we are invariably giving ourselves permission to procrastinate until the next “ideal” date rolls around. To put it differently, when we wait for one day in a year to make the changes or take the necessary leaps we believe we need, we close ourselves off to so many opportunities and so many chances for expansion and improvement. Hence, it’s about time we got off the bandwagon and make the choices that are going to be better for our growth irrespective of fixed dates. It’s healthy to on a regular basis reevaluate ourselves through the observation of our actions and how they are affecting our overall growth as humans being and make necessary amends. But we must resist the urge to make such amends contingent on special dates such as new year day or even birthday or marriage date as the once a year parameter is stultifying and reduces the impetus to really grow and make necessary changes at every point.

It is true that self-improvement, or at least the desire for it, is a widely shared pastime which would perhaps explain why so many people engage in the ritual of new year resolutions. But instead of having one overarching resolution for the whole year, perhaps it would be more worthwhile and advantageous to have a resolution for every moment that is in front of us. In which case, acting on the particular issue at the moment of need could be the appropriate way to approach making changes in our lives. What would be important are the actions and steps taken toward effecting a solution and change at every point. This way we would not just privilege change for the sake of change, but would recognize that lifestyle change is important only to the extent that we are able to work toward it, mostly one step at a time, and incorporating healthy behavior into our everyday conduct to achieve the change. Thus, setting small, attainable goals throughout the year, instead of a singular, overwhelming goal at the start of the year could perhaps help us reach whatever it is we strive to achieve and maintain over time.

In any case, shooting for the moon could be so psychologically daunting that we could sometimes even end up failing to launch in the first place. This is because the average person has so many competing priorities that this type of approach could make concentrating on working toward getting to the moon not just difficult but not doable, thus making the project a failure from the start. We know that life is one long series of decisions and decisionmaking. In every moment, whether we realize it or not, we are making a decision—what to do, what not to do, what to believe, what to think about and so on. It should be clear that it’s the caliber of these decisions that would ultimately determine the quality of the year and our lives in a broader sense and not just the grand new year resolutions that we would not observe or follow most of the time. Besides, it is ridiculous to wait till the first day or month of the year to set important life and perhaps business goals when there are so many happenings affecting us that we need and have to react and respond to everyday. So, instead of making new year resolutions and then making excuses for why we wouldn’t work or haven’t  worked on them, it could and would be beneficial to focus on the excuses themselves: let us identify the barriers preventing us from being fully committed to our goals, and eliminate those first.

However, this is not to absolutely discredit the setting of new year resolutions as people are distinct and work best and make achievements under different circumstances. The idea is that we must look beyond the ordinary making of new year resolutions to focus on how to do better and improve ourselves during the year. The goal is to make us strive to want to do the right things throughout the year and if new year resolutions help in this regard for some of us, so be it. But regardless of new year resolutions, let us all aspire to make the right decisions and amends at every point in the year such that we would be working toward making the best of the year this 2019.

• Yakubu is of the Department of Mass Communication, Kogi State University, Anyigba, Nigeria.