Every year many of us get excited for how the next year will be our greatest year yet. We make promises to ourselves to finally get that beach body, to find love, to start our business, to get rich. Yet every year none of these things happen. We might start off great, make good steps in the first few weeks or months, but we always fail. There can be many reasons why this happens, but I would like to discuss how some of mine fail, and why resolutions are usually a waste.

The first and maybe most obvious reason is that many of us use the new year as a way to procrastinate what we want to achieve. If you want to lose weight and build that dream bod of yours, why wait till the new year. If you are happy with the body you have now, that’s fine. If you are not happy, don’t wait for some arbitrary date. Find a gym, or a good piece of equipment, or just start running, don’t put off bettering yourself.

Now, the new year is here and can provide some good motivation. This motivation is fleeting though. I find myself really motivated at first, but often lose it before I make any meaningful progress. This can happen for a couple reasons. Sometimes it is because I stretch myself too thin. I make many goals and go hard at all of them. The key is to set one goal and work towards it for a couple months before you add on another goal. This goes back to my last post on making reachable goals. It is best if you set achievable goals that have small steps to them. It becomes much easier to achieve your end goal if every few months you hit a small goal.

I want to keep this short so I will add one last piece of advice, find external motivation. It is great to motivate yourself, and you will be more successful if you can, but if you find yourself struggling its always helpful to find external sources of motivation. That could be a good book, a good blog, or a good YouTube channel. It also can help if you have someone else trying to achieve the same goal that works along side you. If you are trying to get in shape, find a friend to work out with, or someone that you can talk too about your workouts. If you want to start a business, find a partner or someone who is also starting one and talk with them about the progress each other makes.

In the end I feel like new years is a time where many people spend a lot of money to start working towards goals and then give up quickly. This ends up wasting money that you could have spent else where. So if you have a few goals you want to achieve this year, choose one and get started. Find someone to go on the journey with you. Most importantly don’t give up if you have a rough day or two, keep working.

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