While I love the idea of setting goals and working towards a better self, I don't find making a resolution at the start of a new year the most practical way to achieve this. Perhaps others have had the experience of finding lasting fulfillment in their promises for the new year, but when I look back on my past Januarys, well, I simply don't even remember what my resolutions were. If these goals, promises, or decisions had amounted to any real positive change, I think I would be able to remember at least one. I do remember having some, but not any sense of real fulfillment or lasting change that came from any. This makes me wonder if new year's resolutions really live up to the hype or if they're even worth making.

Giving up new year's resolutions is not giving up on bettering yourself.

For me, it's actually quite the opposite. The change in my opinion on yearly resolutions stems from a larger, positive change in my daily mentality. As I have grown older, I have started to place increasing value on self-improvement. Working to become the best version of myself has become, in many ways, my overarching top priority and driving motivation for so many of my decisions. The want to be, not a different person, but the most and best of the person I am shapes my days, months, and just about the past year.

So why exactly am I not making a new year's resolution?

Because I believe in making new little resolutions throughout the weeks of the year, not just one meant to last the whole 52 weeks. In your everyday life, you start to notice the little areas that need some changing and the small bits of you that hold the best you back. And even if you see bigger things that need some changing, then still, the way to change them is through continuous, new, smaller steps. This feels more effective and more practical in the long run than striving to maintain some big change for the whole year.

The way to self-betterment is growing through little promises to yourself, time and time again finding some new way to be just a little happier, to put health first a little more, to love a little more, to live a little more. As they say, slow and steady wins the race.

So start making little resolutions as you make little realizations. Not that any resolutions or promises are easily kept, you have to keep working and working on it. But overtime, your mentalities can change. You keep growing. Slow and steady.