Making New Year’s Resolutions every year is a tradition across the nation. However, making them and then giving up on them a week later is even more popular. Lofty or unattainable goals make these attempts at self improvement doomed from the start and set people up for failure. 

People across the country routinely set big goals for New Years, later giving up on those goals as soon as a month in. The tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions goes hand in hand with the other tradition of completely forgetting about them. Therefore, a good way to actually commit to these goals is to make them more realistic. 

New Year’s resolutions are made every year, and roughly 60% of Americans feel pressure to participate in the practice according to Forbes. However, only 20% of people who set resolutions say they’d hold themselves accountable.

The largest group of resolutions pertain to improved health, diet, weight loss and fitness. However, setting such an abstract goal for oneself like “eat healthier” or “lose weight” makes it easy to fail. “Eating healthier” to one person could mean completely cutting out sugar, while for another it could mean eating a salad every day. When someone commits to losing weight, the question then becomes “how much?”, and without a specific end goal, holding yourself accountable to the resolution becomes increasingly difficult. 

Other common resolutions like “travel more,” “improve mental health” and other vague goals have the same issue. Travel where? What coping mechanisms will you deploy to improve your mental health? Are you going to start saving to travel, or do you already have the money? Will you start going to therapy, or spend more time journalling? 

This vague and flakey attitude towards resolutions could easily be curbed by setting more realistic and specific goals. Self improvement is always good, but it is a slow, nonlinear process. Setting smaller, attainable, and specific goals for yourself this year could mean setting more significant goals for yourself next year.