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Black History Month 2025

Opinion: New Year’s resolutions should be balanced, reasonable rather than daunting

Colored fireworks illuminate the night sky. New Year’s Eve represents a time for both celebration and reflection, especially in the form of annual resolutions. (Bettina Wu/Daily Bruin senior staff)

By Kirsten Brehmer

Jan. 16, 2025 5:38 p.m.

This post was updated Jan. 16 at 8:37 p.m.

New year, new me? Not this time.

The start of a new year often brings a tradition of crafting resolutions. Surprisingly, this practice stretches back thousands of years to ancient civilizations like Babylon.

For these early societies, resolutions weren’t about individualistic reinvention. They were promises made to the gods. If a citizen fulfilled these commitments, like returning borrowed tools and goods, they could receive good fortune in the form of healthy harvests and good weather.

Whether it was the Babylonian New Year’s festival known as Akitu, where rituals were performed and debts were paid off, or the renewal of a medieval knight’s chivalry, New Year’s resolutions were very different in the past.

According to the Gallup Poll, resolutions in 1947 consisted of improving one’s disposition, being more understanding and working more efficiently, while today’s resolutions focus on losing weight, staying fit and spending less.

My resolutions in the past would often come in the form of bullet point lists that outlined all the ways I could improve myself for the upcoming year. In my mind, resolutions could only be achieved through a make-or-break mentality, so my ambitions became my disappointments whenever I didn’t live up to them.

Rather than daunting ultimatums that focus on the future, resolutions that focus on the present and who we are right now can become optimistic tools of personal growth.

It’s all too easy to overestimate what we think we can handle, and when you’re attempting to reinvent yourself annually, falling short is inevitable.

The rigid and overly ambitious cycle of unattainable goals can easily cause one’s self-esteem to plummet, leading to other consequences, such as depression or anxiety. Failure is often tied to self-sabotage and because we live in such a competitive culture today, we often use our fallen goals as reasons to punish ourselves.

When I was in high school, I ran cross country and track until I got injured. I let that injury take away the thing I loved the most, running. If I couldn’t run as fast as I once could, I wouldn’t run at all. Year after year I would set next to impossible running goals for myself, and they all would fall apart.

One random day, nowhere near Jan. 1, I stopped thinking about how fast I could run. I didn’t have a goal in mind, and I didn’t have a pace in mind. I just wanted to run.

How we talk to ourselves and the conversations we might be having in our minds may not seem important, but they are. There is the classic adage that goes: Treat someone the way you want to be treated. I want to add: Talk to yourself the way you want to be talked to.

Rather than letting negative self-talk take advantage of our New Year’s resolutions, setting goals with positive intentions and affirmative language will not only feel like less pressure but will likely give us more energy toward incorporating these changes in our lifestyles and dispositions.

While brainstorming resolutions for myself this past year, I was trying to concentrate on what I could do to make myself feel good this year, but I inevitably got lost in the pervasive idea that I needed to improve something about my life to satisfy myself over the next 365 days.

Healthier resolutions should be reasonable and contain balance, and they should have a flexible timeline. Noting your progress – and acknowledging the ups and downs anyone faces when following goals – is a step in the right direction.

Additionally, not all resolutions need progress, and simple acts of kindness that can cause an outward ripple effect among others are just as important.

Our society continues to foster self-contained individuals who focus on the mutual lack of difference between themselves and others. We are so accustomed to disconnecting from the world around us. I feel, however, that nourishing the common culture every human shares is something we have not yet come together upon, but should.

We can all collectively be different and the same. And we can all agree that life should not revolve around the constant improvement of ourselves.

Sometimes we will need to rely on one another more than we might have ever imagined. Supporting ways in which we can be better citizens in our communities, even through New Year’s resolutions, is exactly what our world needs more of.

Reminding yourself that you are only human, and knowing that mistakes can be the stepping stones toward resolutions, will give us the space and time we need to develop as individuals, together.

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Kirsten Brehmer
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