By Kon Eme
‘New Year, New Me’ this is a phrase we are all quite familiar with. With the passing of each new year, we find our determination and aspirations at an all time high, the new year represents a blank slate for many, a chance to start afresh and do all the things we didn’t get a chance to do the year before. That’s why we have new year resolutions, goals we set for ourselves to achieve throughout the course of that new year.
Unfortunately, many of these new year resolutions don’t get achieved, leading to a sense of failure as the year goes on. Without achieving these goals, we feel like our year has not been successful as we would have wished or even worse, feel like the year has been completely wasted and this happens because we aren’t following the basic rule of resolutions; keep it simple.
It’s easy to set unreasonable resolutions when you’re still pumped full of the euphoria from the new year, unreasonable in the sense that you’re quite aware that logically, the chances of you achieving these are slim. However, at the moment you set those yearly goals, you are filled with optimism and hope, leading you to believe you can do anything. Setting these high goals, rather than filling your year with that same positive energy, puts a sense of pressure on you, making you feel like you have to achieve those goals, or else.
Major life and financial decisions shouldn’t be set as New Year’s resolutions. Goals like ‘I want to get married’, ‘I want to be a millionaire’ or ‘I want to have a successful business’ should be set as life goals rather than resolutions because whether or not those goals succeed are not always within our control. In order to maintain sustainable resolutions, we should rather focus on the things within our immediate environment, the things we can control.
‘I want to eat more healthy food this year’, ‘I want to tell my family I love them more often, ‘I want to make a new friend’ setting simple goals like these maintain the optimism you get when setting new years resolutions while getting rid of the competitive pressure usually surrounding them.
Setting large goals for a new year resolution can be done positively by breaking those seemingly large goals into smaller, easier to achieve parts. It’s important to understand that not all change happens spontaneously and the changes that leave the deepest impressions are those that happen gradually. So take your time, remember life isn’t a competition and most of all, remember to keep it simple.
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