New Year’s resolutions just used to be a thing that my mom made me do while we waited to watch the New York ball drop on television. But as the New Year comes in and I grudgingly realize that I probably should have some goals for the upcoming year, I'm getting curious about the whole idea behind New Year’s Resolutions.

According to Livescience, the practice of creating New Year’s Resolutions began with the ancient Babylonians four thousand years ago. The resolutions were more like affirmations of loyalty to the gods and to the king. These promises were the reason that everything was allowed to continue existing at the beginning of each new year.

The Romans continued the practice, although the resolutions were still centered around political loyalty and temple sacrifices to the gods, rather than personal goals.

The origin of the tradition as we know it started quite recently in western civilization. In 1740, Methodism was created. With it, the Covenant Renewal Services came about, which was a night service where people celebrated their achievements of the old year and prepared for the new year. From there, New Year’s resolutions became much more secular.

However, making New Year’s resolutions is actually decreasing in popularity, ever since 2013. Now, only about 45% of Americans constantly make resolutions , and only 8 percent actually end up following through.

Of course, some of the New Year’s resolutions that Americans have are pretty difficult to achieve. One of the top ten on people’s lists for 2015 was “falling in love” and “enjoying life to its fullest,” which are actually pretty hard to achieve in reality, and are hard to measure.

However, even with somewhat lofty and vague resolutions, the Journal of Clinical Psychology reports that it’s still ten times more likely that you’ll fulfill a goal if you explicitly have it noted down as a specific New Year’s Resolution. So in 2016, we should do our best to bring back New Year’s resolutions!