The Lies We Tell Ourselves

(New Year’s Resolutions)

Illusions in varying forms have been outed across the articles, yet one everyone would rather not think about is the illusion of New Year’s Resolutions - especially as the memories and optimism of the New Year fade away. At time of writing, it is only 7 days into the year and so far, it has been okay, but I undoubtedly expect for a rapid decline once the semester starts. Yet, with this knowledge of imminent failure, on the first of every year, we still all collectively decide to fulfil the goals which seem a bit too hard to achieve all year-round. (Quick note to all the people who do manage to uphold their resolutions all year, you guys are beasts - please teach me your ways.) However, the reasoning behind why we choose to keep making these promises to ourselves is simply based in human nature. The possibility of starting afresh and positively developing your persona is too alluring. We all notice our flaws, and it may be easy to simply state that change will happen, but the transition process can be a lot of work. We all inherently want to become better people, and with the promise of an undetermined year, the turning over of a new leaf seems all that more possible. Changes in behaviour are common and it would be natural to assume that a whole new year would be the best time to start the journey, alongside everyone else is doing it!

Whether it be regarding spending patterns, lecture attending, or simply a slight change in attitude, each goal comes with a level of difficulty and with the multitude of things that we each undertake every day, the difficulty can be overwhelming and eventually defeat our initial motivations. An inability to accomplish these resolutions can feel terrible, particularly from personal experience. It could be down to time, money, wanting to go to HIVE, but a key hindrance would be the overarching goals that everyone attempts with very little regard to if they can actually squeeze them into their struggling schedule.

The influence of ‘what we should be doing’ along with a pressure to live a particular way, despite providing a nice little push to being a ‘better person’, plays a significant role in our choices. Nevertheless, failure is not a sign of a lack of motivation or inability, it is rather a sign of disregarding the importance of accomplished growth and completion. It would be easy to have a list of resolutions and to have the resources to complete them all. Life, however, usually consists of a million other accomplishments that we convince ourselves are the basic, mandatory things that hold little light to our resolutions. Genuinely if anyone can honestly say they achieve no growth or development throughout an entire year, you might just need an aggressive reminder which I am more than willing to provide.

Furthermore, available resources are not the only possible obstacles to upholding resolutions. As a study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin highlights, resolutions which were enjoyed, as well as viewed as important, were the ones that usually saw fulfillment in the majority of cases. In other words, despite the intentions for ‘new year, new me’, excessive overarching goals can actually limit a person’s ability to complete their resolutions. The more effective alternative found that creating goals highly specific to one’s attitude and likes developed into resolutions that stuck around to see the next year.

Perhaps then the issue is not one of motivation but rather of relativity. The same way we wished the current educational path did not push information and objectives onto everyone despite different processing mechanisms, we should not expect ourselves to accomplish goals that do not have our traits, qualities, and timetables in mind. Often the thought of growth is associated with either not enjoying or learning to enjoy after a long period of time. Yet, if time were set aside to personalize our goals to maintain a balance between what we know we enjoy and what we can learn to, maybe resolutions would not be known for undetermined but inevitable failure.

Despite these amazing observations into our perception of resolutions (insert hair-flip here), no doubt the next 1st January will see us have the same generic resolutions with very little thought into relativity or enjoyment or feasibility. The silver lining being if it becomes exceedingly difficult to follow through with the resolutions, the knowledge that there is an untouched ability to alter the resolution to how you see fit or to simply recognize that what you accomplish in a year encourages growth, whilst not being on the checklist, can be comforting.

Rochelle Chlala