New year’s resolutions. Why not now?
Date 8 December 2023
A New Year’s resolution is a tradition where we resolve to accomplish a personal goal, or improve our lifestyle or behaviour, on the first day of January. However first-year student, Maisie, believes we don’t need to wait for New Year to do this - we can make these changes all year round.
Everyone says the same thing when they’re asked about their New Year’s resolutions, right? They want to start working out, they want to begin eating healthier, they want to get that job or reach their financial goals, or just be a whole new person.
Typically, these new habits become a January wonder, until they start planning to do it again the next New Year’s, but there’s a fair few people that stick to what they say and for that, I admire them. For these people, the new year is about starting something new, not recycling what they wish they’d done three New Years’ ago.
New Year marks the creation of new goals, the adoption of new habits, and pushing personal limits to grow. But I propose making 1st January ‘day 47’, rather than ‘day 1’. Start it when you think of it – waiting is what makes those goals a temporary fix, rather than a new lifestyle. A new lifestyle of going to the gym every day, or doing the work you know you procrastinate over, is uncomfortable but discomfort marks stretching the limits of your comfort zone and expanding on those limits. So instead, you’ll be striving to have another new goal at New Year and who doesn’t want growth?
For me personally, I’m on day 107. That’s 107 days since I realised that the things I want to achieve aren’t going to hold their opportunities for growth and value until I decide 1st January is the time to start, so I encourage you to start now. Since August I’ve joined a gym – something I never thought I’d do because when people told me in the past they were going to the gym, I told myself, “this isn’t something I’m capable of, I don’t have the strength or the discipline”, but growth is realising that you don’t have strength and discipline walking into the gym for the first time – you have it after months of consistency and failure, because not everyone can be 100% all the time and that’s ok. Taking a week off for whatever reason, then going back and not calling it ‘starting again’ is the difference between those of us who have ‘January wonders’ for our New Year’s resolutions and those of us who pick something new to grow and mould into an opportunity and decide to stick with it all the way through Christmas and beyond.
As it stands, there are goals I’ve not started and goals I have started, but this New Year I intend to continue what I’ve already started – using fitness to grow as a person and improve my own lifestyle and health. Most people see the gym and a well-rounded diet as a way of altering your appearance and it’s only recently that many are beginning to realise that it’s actually a way of developing emotional and physical agility, as well as resilience. Having something to dedicate yourself to that results in a visual change is most beneficial and rewarding when done safely and without restriction. My biggest challenge when beginning this new lifestyle has been balancing it with my assignments, but I’ve realised that I don’t need to be perfect all the time. By not being hard on myself and making time for what’s important, such as spacing my time out so I’m not cramming for deadlines, and getting enough sleep, fitting in the gym has become something that I don’t need to ‘make time’ for anymore, it’s simply part of my existence and I hope it still is when we reach the next New Year. I’m incredibly proud that it will not be my day one.
Maisie is a first-year student on the Fashion Marketing & Promotion BA (Hons) course at the University of Northampton.