Why I stopped doing new year resolutions

Rejoice Mawire, 2nd Jan 2021
Tags: Life Blog Ambition Gratitude Identity

I’ve always been a fan of setting New Year resolutions. I love goals, fresh starts, achieving things, thinking of how I can do and be better. But this year I’m not doing any of that.

You might be thinking, if you love goals so much, why are you not setting any for the New Year? 

Well, the last year, as in 2020, I went a little overboard with my goals. 

At the end of 2019, I decided that I wanted to change up some of my bad habits. Therefore, my resolutions for 2020 was to:

1. Not eat any wheat, which is any bread products, pasta, pastries, and cake. Cake is my favourite food.
2. Deactivate and not use any personal social media. I was spending a lot of time on Instagram and Facebook, so I wanted to stop the habit of being on it for hours. 
3. Get rid of my Netflix account and not watch any Netflix shows alone. I’d fallen into a bad habit of getting home from work and watching Netflix for like five hours before going to bed. I really wish I was lying about that.

When auntie Rona clocked in and we went into lockdown, this became a little more difficult to keep up with. But I can proudly say: I did it! 

Yep. That means for the whole of 2020, in all the mess that the world was in, when everyone was locked indoors banking banana bread, binge watching their favourite shows, and finding cool accounts to follow on Instagram, I didn’t do any of that.

It’s not like the temptation to do it wasn’t there, it’s just that what I was gaining from not doing those things felt quite nice. For the first 8 months of the year.

I didn’t want to tell people that I had failed to pull through.

I didn’t consider myself to be a very disciplined person. I procrastinate from time to time, and often yo-yo on my diet, whichever diet that is at that time. But there was something about this. I think my pride got the best of me and I didn’t want to tell people that I had failed to pull through, so I kept it up.

I learned so much about myself in 2020. One of those things is that I HATE restriction, with a passion.

I grew to hate the fact that I didn’t have the choice of whether or whether not I could do something. Like I couldn’t eat wheat and couldn’t watch Netflix, because I wasn’t allowed to. Though at the same time, I knew that if I was presented with the option, I’d most likely opt-out from doing it.

I spent the last four months of the year just “getting through it”. I guess I actually managed to achieve what I wanted, but somehow it didn’t completely change my life in the way I thought it might. Though, it did teach me a lot about myself.

I like it when I have the option to do something. I like having the option to eat a bad meal and spend hours binge watching ‘Friends’ again. However, I don’t always like the way these things make me feel.

My 2021 new year resolution is: To have no new year resolutions.

Taking on the fact that I hate restrictions and love options so much, I’ve decided that my 2021 new year resolution is: To have no new year resolutions.

I enjoy and value making choices that better me and my future. So I choose to trust myself next year and have hope that even without making any resolutions, 2021 will be a good year.