New Year's Resolution Fails

Each new year brings with it the frenzy over goal setting and resolutions--a time to self evaluate, determine what we want to take into the new year, what we want to leave behind, and what we want to change or improve.  The cycle, though, is in some ways culturally predetermined and we know it:  we set goals, work on them for a few weeks, and then essentially forget about them for the rest of the year.  Some people don't even look at the goals they set last year as they set new goals for the upcoming year.  

The cycle is so well known and understood that weight loss and fitness goals have become a sort of ubiquitous cultural New Year's Resolution joke.  I fall victim to the cycle myself as I set personal fitness and weight loss goals yearly.  As I look back over the years, though, I notice two trends: my goals have become more specific (I have learned about achievability and self knowledge indicates that I need specificity to succeed) and my list has become longer each year.  Explain that.  I know the cycle, I have succumbed to it, I have learned from it.  Ironically, I have improved the outset of my process—the setting of more specific goals—and at the same time I have set myself up to fail at ever more resolutions.  

Last year, I set 11 goals that fell into four different categories: health, finances, intellectual and interpersonal.  This year, I set 14 goals and not surprisingly, they fall into the same four categories.  Honestly, most of them are essentially the same goals in language that is even more specific.

So if New Years resolutions are a vicious, self-defeating cycle, why do we do it?  Why do I do it?

I set goals each year—often the same goals—because I believe in the value of self evaluation and I believe in the desire for self improvement.  I believe that the simple act of goal setting reflects the reality that I am improving.  The fact that I set many of the same goals doesn't necessarily mean that I have failed; it means that many of the things that were important to me last year are important to me this year, which means that my values are consistent and that I am traveling a straight path.  It also means that things that are hard for me are just that:  hard for me.  But I also believe the mere setting of goals represents progress and as such is worth doing...again and again and again.

Written January 4, 2015