Should I Make New Year’s Resolutions?

I love reasons to start fresh.

I was one of the kids that loved the smell of the office supply store at the start of the school year, bringing with it the tangible sense of a new beginning (and I still can’t walk into one of them without a pang of nostalgia). I’ve always taken my birthday as a moment to reflect back and reset myself around what’s important to me. In any relationship I’ve had, I’ve always played up anniversaries of all kinds.

It only follows, then, that I’ve always been a fan of New Year’s resolutions. But because of the feeling of pressure that often accompanied the more concrete goals associated with making resolutions, I started shifting towards setting intentions or picking a “word of the year.” Regardless of exactly how it looks, it has been comforting and grounding to mark the start of the year with some kind of ritual.

It isn’t for everyone, though.

Like many New Year’s resolutions detractors, I’m also a big fan of creating a life in which we are sustainably working towards the things that we want, no matter what day of the year it is. I get not wanting to wait for big moments like the new year or a birthday to dream, to vision, or to make plans.

So should I set New Year’s resolutions? Or not?

If you know me, then you aren’t going to be surprised that my answer to the question of whether or not to make New Year’s resolutions is: it depends.

It depends on any number of things.

Do you feel inspired or motivated to set goals or refocus yourself around the New Year? Do you find that you like the ritual of having a concrete moment to reflect and set goals?

Or do you feel like it’s unnecessary or pointless? Maybe you have your own system of setting and following up on your goals that you find works better for you?

Any of those would be good reasons to make New Year’s resolutions or not make them. And the truth is that I’m not here to convince you whether or not you should because different things work for different people. You do you.

However, if you like the idea of New Year’s resolutions but find yourself shying away from them because you’re worried about following through or they feel like they put too much pressure on you, maybe there’s another way to approach them. One that includes what some people might call “resistance” to doing the things we say we want to do when we set our New Year’s resolutions. (If you’re curious, you can read more about why I put resistance in quotation marks.)

New Year’s resolutions? Or New Year’s intentions?

The main reason that I stopped making resolutions in the form of more concrete goals was because they didn’t seem to “work.” The initial feeling of optimism and excitement that came with committing myself to doing things that I truly wanted to do would inevitably turn into guilt as the parts of me that had other goals would take over. I would commit myself to a daily writing practice, buy myself a new set of journals, and set my morning alarm fifteen minutes earlier. And then, whether on January 2nd or a few weeks later, I would find myself hitting snooze and my journal would sit by my bed with only a couple of pages written. I wanted to connect with myself more intentionally through writing, and at the same time, I also wanted to rest.

These kinds of experiences led me to start softening my approach to New Year’s resolutions, shifting towards intentions or a focus for the year that could leave me more space to be the complex human that I have increasingly come to accept over time. I would say that my intention is to write more regularly, but I wouldn’t make any commitment to how frequently I would actually do it. I could decide day to day whether to write or not.

Looking back at that shift, I can see that this was my best attempt at honoring my own “resistance” to sticking with writing as a daily practice. Not having concrete goals meant that there was more space for all parts of me - for example, both the parts that wanted to journal more regularly and the parts that preferred to stay in bed those extra fifteen minutes in the morning.

The issue, though, is then that this approach can become wishy-washy. In the end, my experience is that often neither one of those parts feels fully tended to and there is no real commitment to meeting the needs of either one of them. I always felt like I could be writing in the mornings when I didn’t, which meant I didn’t fully relax and let myself have that rest all the way. And while the mornings I did write were enjoyable, the decision fatigue every day that my alarm went off was real.

(If you still want to) there’s another way to set New Year’s resolutions.

What I’ve come to learn is that there’s a way to actually include all of your needs in the process of making New Year’s resolutions. Instead of the resolutions being a war against your so-called “resistance” or pretending that it doesn’t even exist, you can honor all of the different parts of you upfront. These New Year’s “resi-lutions” take your so-called resistance as a given and bring it to the table right alongside your motivation.