As long as I could remember, I have participated in some sort of activity that required me to come up with a New Year’s Resolution. From grade school, my resolutions consisted of acquiring more Twizzlers and a new Barbie doll. When I got to middle school, my priorities changed a bit. I wanted to be able to buy the things I wanted, so a job was what I seek. Then high school came, and my persistence to relieve my face of acne was at the top of the list.

For all those years, I never quite understood what a New Year’s Resolution was. I just thought it was a fun activity to do with my classmates. Now, I don’t see it that way. Instead, I consider it to be a joke. I am pretty sure the lot of you know the phrase, “new year, new me.” Well, it just leads me to believe that most people don’t take their resolutions seriously.

There comes a moment in a person’s life when things don’t go the way they want to and they want to change it. The issue can even be something minor, but even so, if there was an issue you were dealing with in that moment, would you wait till the new year to resolve it? I know, that may sound a bit exaggerated, but it doesn’t defeat the purpose of the argument.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to change the way you did things prior to a new year. For some, creating a New Year’s Resolution is a ritual. I know a few that take the time to go over the past couple of months and think about what occurred. What are some positives? What are the negatives? How can I make this new year better? But at least they are thinking it through.

Creating goals for New Year’s should be something that you ponder on. They should be long term and a little challenging. Saying that you want to go to the gym and lose the holiday fat, isn’t really motivational. To start going to the gym for the New Year’s is unsettling and cliche; and to be frank, you’re only giving into the advertisements for gym membership deals that sprout around that time.

If you truly do want to go to the gym and that’s your ultimate goal, set some milestones for yourself. How much weight do you want to lose? Are you doing it for your health or self-esteem? Just asking yourself these questions makes you less basic than the next person.