We’ve all heard the saying before: “New Year, New Me!”. The New Year always creates some sort of excitement, varying from person to person about what their life could possibly become in the new year. For some reason, people give so much power to the beginning of the year, often calling it a “fresh start”, even though every month, week, day, hour, minute, and second is just as much of a “fresh start”. In the past few years, New Year’s resolutions have become less and less popular because of the discovery of the toxic nature of them.

Imagine it’s New Year’s Eve. You are having a good time, probably eating lots of food and hanging out with friends and family. You have a whole list on your phone of everything you could possibly want to change in your life, in almost every category you can think of. You feel like you are on a high of motivation, so excited to start working toward everything on New Year’s Day. Then the clock hits 12. Everyone is excited from the countdown, cheering, kissing, and drinking sparkling beverages. Once the excitement has died down, you either stay up later or crash. Waking up on New Years, you likely feel like crap. You stayed up late last night and ate a ton of trashy food. You probably have already broken your resolution to wake up early. The New Year is already off on a bad note just because of the expectations that you set for yourself.

Having so much expectation for the New Year is unhealthy. Nobody is able to suddenly pick up a ton of good habits one day and continue for a whole year without stopping. Even if you succeed with your resolutions the first few days of the year, this success and motivation will undoubtedly dwindle. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have goals, because you absolutely should. All I’m saying is that you should not wait for the new year to put those goals into action. You also should not pile the goals on yourself all at once. Instead, spread them out so that they are actually achievable. A much healthier mindset to develop is attempting thinking about every day or hour as a “fresh start”. Using that mindset, you can accomplish all of your goals in a much easier and more obtainable way. Next time you feel like giving up until the New Year, keep this in mind, and just start again with your goals the next day.