New Year resolutions

January 04, 2017

“New Year resolutions are things that people list out for the entire year, but it only last the first month of the new year, and then it goes down the drain”, says she who had an entirely bad planning/idea about managing her new year resolutions and gave up 2 years ago. Or rather, thought it wasn’t worth it. How stupid of me. Yes me, who else would think such idiocracy is normal.

For some reason, I've always associated new year resolutions as checklists that you make at the beginning of the year, and come back to it at the end of the year and select which out of the 4 grades you would tick off; excellent, satisfactory, bad, fail (A,B, C, D). This is what traditional education does to you, everything in life is about making the excellent mark. If you don’t excel, you and your attempts are not worth it. There was an on-going joke about my High School motto. Accomplish or do not begin. The boys wouldn’t do their assignments and when questioned by the teachers, they would blame it on the school motto, saying they knew they wouldn’t be able to finish it, so didn’t bother starting it! That’s exactly what I made out of my failed attempts at new year resolutions.

So I never bothered with new year resolutions for the last few years. But reading someone else’s blog about their resolution made me realize I’ve had it wired all wrong all this while. It has finally sunk in that making new year resolutions doesn’t mean you need to do a bunch of things and proof that you are good at it. You don’t have to be good at it, you just need to try. If you did things you already knew, what’s the fun in attempting it, there wouldn’t be anything challenging, and you are never going to do anything new. Worse still, you would have had an entire boring year. Even if you sucked, you’ll know it isn’t your cup of tea, and you would have plenty to talk about to someone else over a cup of tea. I love my teatime.

Anyways, the whole point of new year resolutions is to do something new, something that you’ve not done before but is beneficial for you, and something that is practical at the same time. There’s no point in making resolutions that you know won’t even pass the first week of the year. And the keys to keeping up with new year resolutions are listing things that are practical, reminding yourself about it regularly (weekly may seem a bit too annoying, monthly is a good time), and remembering why you have those resolutions in the first place.

You make resolutions to hopefully bring out the best in you at the end of 12 months. If it is fitness, it could probably be purely for aesthetic purposes like fitting into size 8 clothes, looking good in pictures, or to be healthier generally. If it is about education, you might want to be an academic or get a good job that pays well. If it is about praying and reading bible everyday, you perhaps want to learn more and grow spiritually.

Whatever your resolutions may be, it is so that you see a better you the same time next year, to turn back and see that you have achieved something and be proud about it. The resolutions are ultimately to do something you haven’t done before. If you have achieved size 8 last year, you wouldn’t want to do the same thing again this year would you?

Having said this, it is high time I listed out my resolutions for 2017. Better late than never they say, although 4 days isn’t too late at all. Technically the first week of January is still within grace period. Since I’m still very paranoid about jinxing my own ideas, I’m not going to publically list out my resolutions for 2017. This time next year, I’m going to come back with my monthly achievements. Now, I need to go and find myself a diary that is practical enough first. And infuse some almost-non-existent discipline into myself.

I just hope I don’t end up like the guy who wrote a book about his Groupon adventures and advertised himself on Groupon for a date! Remember, new year resolutions are for yourself, for a better you, and it is something that you need to plan practically, and remind yourself about it on a regular basis in order to make it work for you. It is NOT about excelling, it is about attempting and having fun while at it.