Do New Year's resolutions do more harm than good?

Looking forward to the New Year after a challenging 2020 is crucial; we all deserve to feel optimistic about the future. Although 2020 will go down in history as the year the world changed, for many of us it has been ironically mundane: we are so restricted that we often live the same day over and over. As a result, 2021 may feature in your mind as a year of potential and of possibilities; with vaccines being rapidly rolled out worldwide, the next twelve months promise to be a lot more exciting than the last.

As we look forward to the prospect of doing again, it is tempting to set goals, particularly if we feel that we have been unable to achieve much amongst the national lockdowns, tier systems and various restrictions of the last year. Whilst we all hope that 2021 will be a far more positive year than 2020, I want to urge you to resist the temptation to set a New Year’s resolution this year.

New Year celebrations are typically charged with optimism and hope, and it is with these feelings that we promise ourselves that we will realise out ambitions: we will lose weight, join the gym, learn a new skill, or get better grades. However, after the year we have had, it is time to recognise that it is unfair to set these goals for ourselves: we don’t deserve the annual pressure which tells us that we have more to do; we are not yet the best version of ourselves.

You’ve made it through a pandemic. You have endured all of the anxiety, the loss and the collapsing and shrinking of all that we normally take for granted. You are already enough, without needing to realise those goals which you set every year, and never actually carry out. Don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t complete 2020’s ambitions, and don’t set yourself goals for 2021: just keep coping, because that’s hard enough.

If you are insistent upon setting a New Year’s resolution – perhaps it is a tradition you actually quite enjoy, or you like the structure of planning a goal – then be fair to yourself. Set yourself something which you might actually achieve, or that you won’t be disappointed in yourself if you don’t achieve it. One way of doing this is to set yourself a goal which can’t be measured: say that you want to be more grateful for the little things this year, rather than promising that you will run a marathon; decide that you want to tell people that you love them more often, rather than aiming to pick up a new hobby. These resolutions are beneficial to yourself and to those around you, whilst also being achievable and immeasurable, which means that you don’t get to be disappointed in yourself for not achieving an overly-ambitious or overly-specific aim.

If done with empathy, New Year's resolutions can be a force of good, but they are so rarely a lasting source of optimism, and so often an excuse to feel invalid. Focus on each day ahead of you with all the confidence you can muster, and make the best of the present. You don’t need an agenda of self-improvements; just work on being the best version of yourself in this given moment. If you can’t resist the temptation of setting a resolution this year, then treat yourself with the fairness and empathy you would use towards a friend, and make it something positive, rather than pressurising.

Edited by Pia Cooper