New Years Resolutions: Failure or Opportunity for Growth

I’ve already written a bit about resolutions, but I have a few more thoughts on them. I was thinking about them last week and started thinking about shifting focus from the idea that resolutions should be something we do consistently from Jan 1^st through Dec 31^st to thinking of them as habits we want to have achieved by December 31^st.

I’ve been thinking about this even more the more I hear people talking about failing their resolutions already- not even the end of the January and they already failed at their resolution. Hearing this, I just think “how can you ‘fail’ a resolution when it’s only the first month of the year? You have another 11 months to still work on this!”

Which has me thinking this is a needed mentality shift for people. If you resolve Jan 1^st that this year you are going to go to the gym before work every day, and now it’s the third week of January and you haven’t gone to the gym at all this week, so you failed because you haven’t been to the gym before work every day since January 1^st on. Since you have already failed, just throw in the towel and give up on that goal because you already failed. Except there is no reason just because you haven’t gotten this resolution down to a habit after only 23 days in, you can’t make it a habit. You have lots of time left to still work on making it a habit!

If your resolution hasn’t gone perfectly so far, that doesn’t mean you failed, it means you still have room to improve it.