New Year’s Eve.

A time of celebration, reflection and to some extent, rebirth.

The year in which we live in, a fairly insignificant detail, is one of the few variables of life that remains constant. Because of this, the shift from one year to another has always been an international phenomenon, one that has been engraved into the social and cultural framework of society.

While the new year is a celebration of the previous year, it is also a prediction of the upcoming one. People view the new year as a way to start fresh, changing their habits for the better. Most people create a list of new year’s resolutions, indicating what they hope to accomplish.

In reality, these resolutions aren’t helpful, as they do nothing to help reach one’s goals. In fact, can you even remember what your new year’s resolution was for 2017? Can you remember ever ending your year by saying “I completed my resolution”? Probably not.

When we set new year’s resolutions we justify our procrastination. We know what we want but we wait to get it. One of the most common new year’s resolutions is to lose weight. It’s so common that for the last few years, Planet Fitness has been a key sponsor of the Ball Drop in Times Square. However, the concept of a resolution simply cannot apply to a goal such as weight loss.

For example, many people who wish to lose weight will wait until January 1^st to start their exercise regimen. In the month leading up to that, they will eat, waiting for the year to start before they proclaim, “new year, new me”.

Resolutions also fail due to a lack of obtainability. When we set new year’s resolutions we often create broad goals. By not setting a specific target, it becomes hard to identify when you’ve “completed” what you set out to do at the beginning of the year.

Finally, these resolutions fail as a result of one critical error, the amount of time we give ourselves to succeed. When the year starts people are more than willing to accomplish what they say. They fail by not establishing a time frame in which to do iit. Many of the resolutions we set are targets for the year as a whole. When you give yourself that much time to do something it is inevitable that you will eventually do nothing.

On new year’s we take time to think about our future. We set resolutions for ourselves that tend to slip through the cracks. In reality, the new year is a time for self-analysis. Use what you desire for the new year and translate it into a specific goal for yourself. Only by doing this will you be able to measure the change you want to see.