I’ve never been an avid fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’ve tried my hand at them a few different times, sometimes proving to be successful with my set resolution, and sometimes proving to be a dramatic failure.
New Year’s resolutions are, for a lot of people, an important symbol for the start of a new year, with many of us associating them with success and good fortune to an extent. A very common resolution is to lose weight, or diet, or live a healthier lifestyle, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, or with other New Year’s resolutions in general. But plenty of folks struggle with holding themselves accountable to their designated resolution and end up falling off the wagon a few months into a new year, encouraging a mindset of failure and amplifying the allure of giving up after a short time.
I can’t help but wonder if a shift in mindset would aid in alleviating the lack of success pertaining to New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps something as simple as reframing the way in which we interpret what the expression itself says, and changing the word resolution to solution.
A solution implies there is some sort of problem at hand, and acts as a remedy to said problem. If we consciously choose to view our goals as solutions as opposed to resolutions, perhaps we can subtly convince our subconscious that we need to be successful to solve the issue.
I don’t mean to imply that New Year’s resolutions must coexist with problems, because that gives the entire notion of setting goals a negative connotation. Maybe one of your resolutions is to be a more patient person, and this certainly isn’t a bad thing. But if we choose to see this yearning as a problem, for example, by reframing the yearning to appear to us as needing to improve upon our patience, perhaps the desire to do so will help us to stay true to our goals.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
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