New Year, New Me? The Potential Toxicity of the New Year’s Resolution.
By: Allyson Goetz, LCMHCA
“Exercise More!” “Eat Healthier!” “Go to Therapy!” “Save Money!” “Get Organized!”
It’s that time of year! The time when friends, family, coworkers, even strangers, ask you, "What's going to be your New Year’s resolution?”. For many, New Year’s is a time to make big, bold declarations about how they are going to change their lifestyle in the upcoming calendar year. This sounds great, right? Taking our ‘fresh start’ as an opportunity to live better and prioritize healthier habits. It is great! I am always supportive of individuals taking steps to better their life, no matter the motivation. The issue people often run into, however, is creating goals with true longevity. Instead, they create resolutions that invite them to fall into the toxic cycle of New Year’s: making a goal with no means to implement it, failing to make progress, and entering into a wave of self-criticism, defeat, and a reduction in confidence.
Our perfect evidence for this is the gym in January. Walking in during the first 2 weeks of the month, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the number of patrons, with lines for treadmills and an empty weight rack. ‘Give it 10 days’, you tell yourself. And, sure enough, when you return to the gym in February, you find it the way you remember, with your favorite elliptical waiting empty for you.
So, what is the reason for this? Why don’t New Year’s resolutions last? The short answer is, they’re too vague! When I say I want to exercise more, what does that mean? If I currently don’t work out at all, going to the gym once technically accomplishes this goal. But that wasn’t really what I meant, right?
When we set ourselves up for failure, New Year’s resolutions tend to have the opposite effect. Instead of building our confidence and self-esteem, these unattainable goals typically leave us feeling discouraged, causing us to abandon the goal altogether. “I’ll try again next year!”, we say. But, what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if there was a way that we could name our resolutions and actually achieve them, in a healthy way? Thankfully, there is a formula for this!
When setting our New Year’s goals, it’s important to be as specific as possible. How many times a week do you want to exercise? For how long? What type of exercise do you plan on doing? Giving ourselves as little room for interpretation as possible is key.
Our goals need to be realistic for us. If I’ve never laced up running shoes, it might not be realistic for me to make running a marathon my New Year’s resolution. Maybe I should start smaller, for instance, running one mile.
Lastly, it’s important to create a timeline for achieving our goals. Giving ourselves an end date can help the goal feel more attainable/practical. Further, this allows us the opportunity to gradually work up to our ultimate goal. If I want to start going to the gym 3 days a week by the end of the month, I could work up to this by starting at once a week, then twice, and so forth.
The theme here is that resolutions can be a wonderful tool! It is all about the mindset in which we approach them. Allowing for slip-ups and planning our goals to be achievable can help us truly embrace that “new year, new PIECE of me” mentality, helping ourselves get a little better each day. No New Year’s goal is going to completely transform our lives, but over time, our small changes grow to much larger ones. Happy New Year!
