This New Year, like every other year, millions of Americans made resolutions for the next 12 months. We promised to eat less sugar, or do more yoga or read more books, all in pursuit of our best selves.
Most of these resolutions won’t stick around to see February. Maybe our goals were too ambitious, or maybe we realized we didn’t really care for yoga or maybe daily life was too overwhelming and our promises to ourselves slipped through the cracks.
Today’s culture of near-constant self-improvement will tell us that this is a personal failing, indicative of thin moral fiber, lack of motivation or laziness. This societal expectation of perfection ignores the reality of life–it’s simply not that easy. New Year’s resolutions are a recipe for unrealistic expectations, exploited by the self-help and fitness industries that prey on our insecurities and our most vulnerable parts.
Even in a year that didn’t constantly batter us with disaster after disaster, people are flawed creatures of habit that don’t like to do hard things, especially without the right motivation. Consider the demands placed on us all, this year and last year, and it’s clear that we’re not in a collective space to be making things even harder.
From the ongoing pandemic complete with nightmare variants, to worsening climate-change related weather events to the near-upending of our democracy nearly 12 months ago, simply existing in America this year was at best stressful and at worst disastrous. In a world that’s stretching us all thin, I think it’s okay to cut ourselves some slack this January.
Instead of setting resolutions, let’s look back on the year we’ve lived and try to find the good. Gratitude is a powerful tool–if we want to really feel better, it’s going to be far more effective than any single lifestyle change.
That’s not to say, of course, that we need to ignore the parts of ourselves that we want to change. I see two ways to address the would-be target of a New Year’s resolution. The first is simple, but it’s easier said than done: self-acceptance. Despite the seemingly flawless lives we may see through the narrow window of social media, and despite the constant barrage of self-improvement suggestions dominating our news feeds, personal shortcomings are an inescapable part of human life. To ignore this truth and instead stubbornly try to force perfection is to doom yourself to an annual cycle of fluctuating disappointment and frustration.
Once you’ve identified your so-called flaws and embraced that they’re probably never going to change, you can open up ways to work around them, rather than against them. If you hate running, don’t spend hours and hours torturing yourself–throw out your running shoes and find some other way to get whatever it is you’re looking for.
When something really needs to change, a problem that doesn’t have a solution in acceptance, the motivation and drive will come organically. Self-improvement doesn’t happen on a calendar with an all-or-nothing attitude that despises imperfection, it comes from the gratitude for yourself or your life that makes you want to make it better.
Here, here, Aaron! Well said!