New Year, New Me?

By Esme Ginsburg

After a whole year of dragging your feet to barely get by, December finally comes around to change it all. The new year is a time to reinvent yourself and to put behind all your bad habits. The ball drops at midnight and everything changes. But why do people wait a whole year to make a change? There are three hundred sixty-five days to do just that and yet people around the world make January first the day to change. How long will your resolutions even last? The gym pretty much only exists until February. Oh, and that cleaning? Wait another week, maybe two, and your house will be back to the same tornado it was. I say we should be our best self in February, March, and maybe even the rest of the months too.

For anyone who has tried to give up a bad habit, they know that is is not as easy as just saying you want to do it. It does not always work either. When you cut out a bad habit all together you can feel deprived of that habit if it were, say, cutting out some type of food. You will then crave that habit again because you have just deprived yourself of it. Therefore, this becomes a whole cycle with wanting the thing you cannot have. New Year’s resolutions like this can become unhealthy, with pressure to follow to that new diet or cutting something out. This will just result in yet another stressor, so why even bother trying to make that change if it is not giving you a positive return? Change should come from a legitimate reason, not some holiday.

Studies at Harvard have proven that New Year’s resolutions can do more harm than good. They describe that our goals are usually set way too high and ultimately lower our  self-esteem (Cuddy). We continue to pile on goals for a “perfect life” that may not happen in a year. Our New Year’s resolutions should be to do the best we can and not to reach a crazy goal. Give yourself a though. An entire year of stressed being piled on, maybe New Years is a time for renewal but not the crazy ideals that most people put on themselves.

So should you make your New Year’s resolutions? In short, the answer is no. Essentially, they are a waste of your time and self-esteem. There is no need to wait all year for one day to make a change.

Works Cited

“Are New Year’s Resolutions a Bad Idea?” MD Anderson Cancer Center, MD Anderson Center, www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/are-new-year-resolutions-bad.h33Z1590624.html.