While I have expressed in years past how little stock I put into “New Year’s Resolutions” and the people who make them but never follow through – this January hasn’t changed my stance on them yet either.
Several social media surveys made the rounds in October and highlighted that on average, adults make about three New Year resolutions annually.
The top resolutions are usually ways to improve finances, mental health, diets and to lose weight.
In adults ages 19-34, other resolutions included things such as making more time for loved ones, quitting smoking, making more time for hobbies, improving work-life balance, and meditating regularly.
On top of that, Forbes says that most people keep their resolutions going for two-to-three months before ditching them and that less than 1% make their goals stretch throughout the entire year.
Naturally, you have to remember that when someone takes a survey, the results and findings are limited to only those folks – in this case, 1,000 people took said survey.
While it’s a nice broad generalization, it also can’t be applied to everyone.
Major kudos to my data analysis sociology professor for helping cement that fact into my brain!
Plus, just surveying 1,000 people when almost 340 million people are living in the US as of 2023 creates a huge divide in applying such percentages over the entire population.
At age 37, I’m not part of that age group and still won’t have any resolutions to announce this year.
For me, I feel like it’s more important to do your best every day that you can.
While I agree that having goals is a great strategy, I think it sets us up to fail if we set the bar too ridiculously high, too.
Plus, with some of those resolutions, like creating a healthier work-life balance or improving mental health, you’re at the mercy of a lot of factors outside your control, too.
I mean, you can’t do anything about the weather, your coworkers, workload, or customers!
In the end, I think that’s what people forget most of all – you can only control yourself and how you respond to situations.
I’m going to have to admit that my mom has been preaching that life lesson for years before it finally sunk into my brain.
We don’t even discuss how stubborn I was during my teenage years either.
But, I’m glad to say that once I got done learning things the hard way, it’s certainly been easier to pay attention to her nuggets of wisdom the first two or three times rather than just being hardheaded.
And while I’d like to think that maybe the road goes both ways and she’s learned to listen to me in regards to technology, shopping online or not getting hooked by social media scams – I know that she’s learning the hard way there, too.
On any given day, I help her field friend requests from her real-life friends who have been cloned by scammers on Facebook.
I also had a similar sort of field day monitoring our business page during the UIL football state finals while other scammers were trying to get our followers to click on suspicious links to steal their information or upload a virus to their devices.
However, I think it’s worse to have someone, somewhere impersonating your friend online.
It’s even happened to me a time or two on Instagram and I’m always grateful for my friends who let me know when it’s happening.
There’s just something so satisfying about reporting those scammers and blocking them accordingly!