Boom! Fireworks scatter the night sky and cheers fill the room.

“New Year, New Me,” you chime as you clink your glass with somebody else’s in celebration of 365 days of a clean slate. Just like Cinderella, as the clock strikes 12, you turn into a completely new person. You need to watch a season a day of Black Mirror is suddenly replaced by the need to get a yoga mat and buy a membership for that new expensive gym that opened up down the block.

Your diet of pasta and Chick-Fil-A got replaced with a burning desire for kale and green tea- nothing else. You suddenly don’t bite your nails anymore and that ex that you were totally in love with vanished from your mind at around 11:59 on December 31st. You’ve lost 10 pounds immediately and you know your purpose in life. It’s a new year, right? You’re a new person. A changed person.

Right?

Oh, how I wished life worked like that. However, it doesn't.

I can’t stand the “New Year, New Me” mentality. People try to give themselves a complete 180-degree turn on who they are and better yet, expect themselves to accommodate to their new lifestyles in under a month. Funny enough, those are the same people who drop those resolutions before anyone can ask them about it at Easter brunch.

I think instead of “New Year, New Me”, it should be “New Year, Better Me." The point of a new year is to use each and every day to improve who you already are. If you want to get better at playing the piano, you can’t hop onto “Fur Elise” and expect to nail it because I promise you, you’ll play the first nine notes and won’t touch your piano after that. You have to learn “Hot Cross Buns” and all the painfully boring notes first before you can play something more difficult.

Just like the piano, you can’t expect to jump to change yourself completely and stick with it because it’s not you anymore. You’ll be trying to live a life that is not yours anymore. You have to work with what they have and who you are. Once you make the best out of yourself and your opportunities, only then will you be able to add new things to your routine and push yourself for that extra mile.

Resolutions are not a bad idea, though. Instead of having a long list of impossible tasks like:

1. Drink 5 gallons of water a day.

2. Climb Mount Everest,

Start with monthly or weekly resolutions. This way, you’ll feel like you’ve completed more and the sense of accomplishment will push you to achieve more. Keeping one or two simple resolutions on the list, or freebies, also trick your brain into thinking you have done more work than you actually have. With one or two things crossed off, it’ll look like you have less to do. Less work. Less stress. More room to grow.

So, hopefully, when you realize you've overslept on January 1st and missed all your 6 a.m. workout alarms, you turn over in bed and sleep for a little longer. Have a long shower and sing all your favorite songs obnoxiously because bathroom acoustics are a real thing, and relax. Take your resolutions one step at a time and you’ll be a better person by the end of this year.