Did you wake up on January 1st, look in the mirror and realize that you looked exactly the same? You wouldn’t be the only one. The whole New Year’s resolution thing can really backfire and make you feel like you can’t succeed at anything, which is the total opposite of the point. Here’s your friendly reminder that just because it’s 2020, it doesn’t mean you have to change anything.
- You already enjoy your life. If you already have good friends, a career that feeds your soul as much as your bank account and are either happily single or in a loving relationship, you’re doing pretty well. You have a life that you actually like which is an accomplishment in itself.
- You’re enough. You don’t need to lose 10 pounds. You don’t need to stop going to the pilates classes that you love and take up running instead. You don’t need to eat salad at every single meal. You’re already good enough exactly the way you are and the fact that the calendar turned to a new year doesn’t matter at all.
- Life is hard. You’ve gone through enough rough times in your time on this earth and it makes zero sense to put added pressure on yourself to act a certain way or follow certain goals. There’s so much crap to deal with on a daily basis – and hey, sometimes even just surviving can feel exhausting.
- Change doesn’t equal happiness. Sure, you might be glad that you lost weight – at first. Then you’ll get over it and the little annoying things in life will start to get to you again. Any change won’t necessarily make you happier, so you should think about whether you truly want to do something instead of just doing it because everyone else is.
- February is a better time for goal-setting. Or March. Or April. And so on. If you decide this summer that you really want to focus on your health or your career, why can’t you? You might not magically be ready on January 1 to come up with a grand plan for the next year and that’s totally cool.
- You’re different every single day. Every day you’re a little older and you’ve experienced a bit more than the day before (even if that just means you’re one episode closer to finishing Making A Murderer). Assuming that what you want to do on the first day of the new year will still be the same come fall is kind of crazy.
- 365 days is a long time. It’s kind of a cliché at this point that resolutions are hard to follow but it totally bears repeating. 365 days is a long time and you should never feel bad about yourself for even one of them.
- All the resolutions are taken. Let’s be real here: if you don’t want to change your diet or how you work out, you’re basically out of any potential resolutions. So instead, be an original and resolve to just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s obviously working.
- Real change occurs when we least expect it. Think about the times in your life that have mattered the most and have changed you the most. They most likely didn’t happen on the first day of a new year. They snuck up on you, whispered in your ear, and suddenly you had a new perspective on life or love or whatever else.
- You should only compete with yourself. If you make resolutions, you end up competing with everyone on social media who is posting gym selfies or talking about their new self. If you write down a list of goals when you want to, you’ll only be competing with yourself, and you’ll always come out on top.
