Breaking the unhealthy mindset of New Year's resolutions
New Year's Resolutions Collage (James Hart, The Puma Prensa)
By Josie Eubank, staff writer
January: an opportunity to initiate change for the New Year. For many people, that change is often drafted through New Year’s resolutions. However, most resolutions have proven themselves to be nothing more than false promises—another reason to feel guilty after failing to follow through. With a new set of unreasonable and unrealistic expectations each year, this endless cycle becomes seemingly hopeless.
According to a survey conducted by Forbes Health Poll, 29% of the respondents felt pressured into creating New Year’s resolutions. Maria Carrillo senior John Tran admits that he “never follows through with [his] New Year's resolutions because no one else does,” despite his efforts to establish goals with each New Year. Furthermore, another survey from insideoutmastery.com that gathers research and data conducted from a multitude of tests reveals that only 9% of individuals see their resolutions through to completion—ultimately raising the question: Why is this overall rate of success so low?
New Year's resolutions are often surrounded by an overwhelmingly negative outlook on life when a person chooses to look at what needs to be “fixed” rather than what they can do to work towards a goal. When one limits their perspective to only what needs to be “resolved,” it can become a cruel and unfair cycle of punishment as they inevitably set themselves up for another letdown. The way a person frames the entire situation can easily dictate their direct outcome.
As most fail to consider that it takes more than a resolution to change, it becomes easy for a person to hyper fixate on the overall “end goal” rather than the entire process that goes with it. Therefore, a significant amount of new year's resolutions lack structure and “often fail because they encourage a goal-oriented, rather than a process-oriented approach,” according to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. As people grow accustomed to this goal-oriented approach, this toxic mentality can become a tough cycle to break.
“As a species in today’s world, I feel people are always looking for the end results to happen very quickly,” said Darcy Analora, school psychologist here at MCHS. Analora additionally raises the fair point that as a screen-bound society revolving around social media, visuals of the “perfect lifestyle” are easily accessible and constantly bombarding our feeds, perpetuating this idea that immediate change is necessary to lead this ideal life. “I don’t feel purposely people are trying to adopt toxicity, but rather it comes down to just wanting to be better,” she adds. Analora says that this desire for an individual to become better is a natural aspect of human nature. However, the issue does not stem from this desire, it is rooted in the unhealthy habits that people create.
Though working through this toxic mindset can be incredibly difficult, it encourages a healthier one that focuses on developing habits in order to achieve one’s desired goals. Analora states that it is important to “break it down a bit, rather than make some sweeping statement.” She suggests that rather than saying, “I’m not going to eat chocolate for this whole year,” maybe say, “Monday through Friday I am going to be conscious of all my food intake items and then enjoy myself on the weekends.” In order to maintain such structure, many psychologists advocate for “SMART goals,” which stands for goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Setting goals for ourselves isn’t always a bad thing. There is no denying that the rates of success for new years resolutions are incredibly low, but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost if we adopt a new mindset that promotes a balanced structure. By simply establishing more realistic and achievable goals, we already set ourselves on a better path to success each year.