BY BORDI JAEN
THE EARTH recently completed another 365-day cycle around the sun. As such, people all over the world welcomed the new year with hope and optimism.
It is a tradition among many people to have New Year’s resolutions – exercising more, learning a new skill/hobby, quitting a vice, spending less money, etc.
Despite the well-meaning goal of this tradition, why is it that many go unfulfilled?
One study notes that only about 10 percent of people who make New Year resolutions feel they have successfully fulfilled them. Why the dismal figure? Is the tradition actually beneficial for one’s self-improvement?
First of all, where does it start? When does self-improvement actually start?
Self-improvement begins with us but specifically, it begins with self-acknowledgement. Builders don’t fix good fences. Self-improvement begins when the self acknowledges that there is indeed an aspect of our being that we need to either fix or improve upon.
Must we wait for one time of the year to reflect on that and improve? Let us not wait for that time of the year to improve ourselves. If you can do it in June, do it. It doesn’t make a difference but a difference it would certainly make.
Others may say, “Well, Bordi, isn’t a tradition that encourages self-improvement in oneself a good thing?”
On paper, it certainly does look like a good thing but on further analysis, I beg to differ. There was one accomplished man who, in a graduation speech for a school, gave a solid tip for being successful: “Make your bed”.
His point being that making your bed was the first task of the day that you successfully do and that when one does something successfully, it primes them up for the rest of the day.
People tend to overthink making resolutions. To the human brain, thinking about something is just as good as doing. But this is why people get stuck up in mind-made fantasies ever so often. Once the buzz of the new year wears off, so does the zeal and commitment. And people become sad because it bugs their conscience. It demotivates them and hampers them in their quest for self-improvement.
Once self-acknowledgement takes place, one must do something more than just write it down on a piece of paper and hope for the best. People sometimes forget that self-improvement is a gradual process. There needs to be planning. There needs to be coordination.
Baby step goals are the best because not only are they easy to fulfil at first, but also because they prime us up to do eventually harder things and make us committed to do the things we’ve always wanted to do.
People are like aquarium fish. Before you put your new fish in the tank, you need to acclimate them to the water conditions of their new habitat or their system gets shocked and they’ll die. One acclimates aquarium fish by letting a little of the new water drip into the fish’s bag little by little for them to get used to the new water.
Lastly, it is perfectly alright to have a New Year’s resolution. If you think it helps you, go ahead. However, let us remember that self-improvement need not wait the new year to be accomplished. Why wait for a new year to be a “new you”? You can be a new you whenever you want to./PN
