The New Year is Meaningless

But 2020 can be more powerful than you think.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Are you over the whole “new year’s resolutions” and “new year, new you” thing?

Yeah, me too. I was over it 10 years ago.

I’ll admit — every year it still has a bit of an appeal. Your friends mention their new year’s resolutions. Social media tries to inspire you to change (or make you feel horrible for not doing anything). Blog posts (like this one) try to give you tips on taking on the new year.

But we’ve all experienced enough of these to know it’s pointless to try. We go into January with high hopes and grand goals. It’s a struggle, and there may be some setbacks, but we do fairly well in January.

Then February hits. Life goes on and gets busy. We’ve lost the luster of the new year — it doesn’t seem so new anymore. The failures start piling up. It gets too hard. Before February is over, we’ve abandoned our resolutions, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

So like you, after experiencing enough failed Februaries, I’ve given up on new year’s resolutions. It’s not that I’ve given up on goals or change. Throughout the year, I still try new things, create new habits, and generally improve myself. But it loses the oomph of that new year inspiration.