Anya Mullen – Opinions Editor

Maybe your experience has been different, but in my opinion, drastic changes in our lives, what we like to call new years resolutions, don’t work. To alter specific things in your life, gradual change is the best option. Building habits. The transition from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 is just one sleep, not a magical night where everything we want to change about ourselves just changes when we open our eyes on Jan. 1.

Image courtesy of Anya Mullen

I think that growth is great, but saying resolutions out loud to everyone is almost like saying your wish out loud when you’re blowing out the candles on your birthday cake. You’re setting yourself up for external pressure and greater disappointment if you fail. That being said, maybe external pressure helps some people achieve their goals. If your roommates are asking you if you went to the gym yet, or your parents are asking you if you did your homework, maybe you feel more urgency to do those things. But shouldn’t the motivation to commit to a resolution come from within? It’s in the word: you should have your own resolve to eat healthier, or travel more, or whatever it is you’re hoping to do differently in your life in the upcoming year. 

I’m sick of making resolutions, of waiting for a new year to start to change things about myself. If you realize one day that you want to change your life, that change should start that day. One day a few weeks ago, I realized I hadn’t read a book in ages. Instead of waiting until Jan. 1 to crack one open, I read a book for five minutes that day. The next day, I read it for maybe seven minutes. The next day, ten. Before I knew it, I finished four books during the winter break and since then, I have been reading for at least 30 minutes a day. Just like that, I built a small habit that has ended up affecting me positively in other aspects of life as well. Since I’m reading a book before bed, I’m not on Instagram until the moment I turn my light off anymore. I’m sleeping a little better. I’m waking up feeling more refreshed. All because I started reading for five minutes a day a few weeks ago. I think that was a lot more powerful than trying to make a big, dramatic resolution and trying to implement it the moment the dates started ending in 2026 instead of 2025.  

Anything can become a habit if you do it every day. Nothing happens instantly. How many times have you tried to start going to the gym because it was your New Year’s resolution, and you didn’t build the habit in the end? A resolution is too much pressure. 

Psychology even corroborates this one for me. After reading a couple of articles about the phenomenon of people’s difficulty in keeping resolutions, it makes more sense. Setting vague, big goals rarely works. If you don’t enjoy the process, you won’t want to go through it. You’ll be too fixated on your end goal, instead of the daily effort required to reach that end goal. For example, if your goal is to run a marathon and try to start from zero by running ten kilometres a day, you probably won’t do that. However, if you set your initial goal to be a short run three times a week for three weeks, that’s a concrete, tangible, reasonable goal to meet. If you can articulate and enjoy the process of reaching the goal, you might find that resolution easier to keep.