By Anna Kosta-Rodriguez
Hello, 2023!
It’s already the end of January and besides the stress of starting a new year, kids starting school again, recovering from the holidays, etc., a lot of us are struggling to keep our New Year’s resolutions, if we made any.
Let’s see some statistics on New Year’s resolutions from insideoutmastery.com:
- Roughly 38.5% of US adults set New Year’s resolutions every year (I didn’t)
- 59% of young adults (age 18-34) have New Year’s resolutions
- 48% want to exercise more (the top 3 resolutions are all health-related)
- 23% quit within the first week and only 36% make it past the first month
- Only 9% successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions
Of those people who set New Year’s resolutions, 52.6% focus on one while the remaining 47.4% set multiple, additionally, people over the age of 55 are 3.1 times less likely to have resolutions compared to younger adults. 54% of parents with children have New Year’s resolutions which is 1.6 times more than those who don’t have kids.
The following graph shows the most common New Year’s resolutions from various studies done in the United Kingdom. Unsurprisingly, a lot of health-related goals are on the list, among others such as career goals, charity work, spending time with family, etc.
What’s Your Motivation?
With only 9% of people successfully completing their resolutions and a whopping 62% of people not even setting any, the big question is why? Why is it so hard to keep these goals for ourselves? Why are so many people not even bothering to have any? Most of the resolutions listed in the previous graph don’t seem that hard to accomplish, yet the statistics show otherwise.
Here’s another picture for you that explains the top 4 reasons people give for “failing” New Year’s resolutions:
You can see that the main reason (35%) that people “fail” is due to losing motivation. Now, why would someone lose motivation? Maybe they don’t have anyone holding them accountable. Maybe their goal is unattainable for them at this time, but won’t be in the future and they just can’t anymore. Maybe when they have a slip-up, they don’t have the emotional or physical resilience to bounce back.
According to research, successful individuals are likely to experience 14 slip-ups during a 2-year interval. It happens to everyone, but if you have other things taking up your time or energy (family, kids, work, health) and no one going to bat for you, chances are far more likely you won’t have the motivation to keep trying. Social support especially is a huge key to success in pretty much anything, not just New Year’s resolutions.
Perhaps the real reason our resolutions don’t hold up is because we hold ourselves to too high a standard. We make ourselves falsely believe that if we don’t accomplish our resolutions we are failing, so why even set any to start with? Personally, I’m in the second category. I have set resolutions in the past, but not for the last several years. Why? Because I have a fear of failure and I like to follow through. If I set a goal for myself that relies on things (or people!) out of my control, chances are far more likely that it won’t come to fruition. So, I fit into the category of the 62% of people who don’t even bother.
A Little History Lesson
The first New Year’s resolutions were made by the Babylonians about 4,000 years ago. They did this in mid-March when they celebrated their 12-day festival called Akitu, the spring harvest of barley. One of the most important parts of this festival was the crowning of the new king or the reaffirmation of the old one. Special rituals affirmed humanity’s covenant with the gods, this is likely how we got our modern view of New Year’s resolutions. It may not be a covenant or promise with gods, but a promise to ourselves and others.
Ancient Rome took a page from the Babylonian playbook and had their own version of New Year’s affirmations or promises. At first, they celebrated around March, but later around 300 B.C. they changed it to January as we have it today. The Romans had a swearing-in of officials and army generals and the citizens would share sweets like honey or pears as presents for a “sweet new year.”
Although there may not be a direct link from either the Babylonian or Roman celebrations to what we have today, the desire to start anew shows up repeatedly in western civilization. These days our resolutions are more about self-improvement than anything to do with religion, the military or the government, but the idea is still there.
Resolve to Live with Intention
Resolutions are set in stone, something that must be done, after all, the definition of resolute is “marked by firm determination” and comes from the word resolve which means “to deal with successfully”. Someone who has resolve is someone determined who cannot be moved or swayed from their opinion or choices.
Having resolve isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong, but when we have this mindset that it must be done or we have failed ourselves (or others), it puts far too much pressure and stress on our already stressful lives. Determination is amazing and something too many people don’t have enough of. But it can be our own downfall. If we’re so determined to reach a goal or objective that when we don’t reach it, we beat ourselves up over it and feel like we’ve failed, then we’re not doing anything productive.
Here’s an alternative: Don’t set a resolution, set an intention. I can’t take credit for this, as I heard it from one of the moms at my daughter’s school. It’s a similar idea, but has a different meaning. Intent is defined as “a usually clearly formulated or planned intention” and its synonyms include aim, idea and objective. An intention is “what one intends to do or bring about.”
There is no failure with intention. It’s not a lofty goal you can’t reach. It’s an objective which is likely to change as the days, weeks, months and years pass you by. It’s something important or significant to you and the level of importance may shift. And that’s okay! Our lives are not set in stone, so why should our goals be any different?
New Year, New View
If you get nothing else from this blog post, please take this to heart: You are not a failure.
If you made resolutions and you’ve kept them so far, you are amazing and a very small percentage of the world. Keep going, I’m proud of you!
If you didn’t make resolutions, for whatever reason, consider creating a list of intentions. That’s what I’m going to do as soon as I’m done writing this post.
If you made resolutions and broke them already, that’s okay. Maybe you just need to take a breath. Consider making an intention (or two) while you’re breathing. Or not. It’s up to you.
Go out and live with intention, y’all, and have an amazing 2023!
Sources:
https://insideoutmastery.com/new-years-resolution-statistics/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intention
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intent
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolute
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolved
https://www.livescience.com/42255-history-of-new-years-resolutions.html
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