By Chelyse Prevost
Blog Content Contributor
It’s finally here. You’re drinking more water, sleeping better, and doing away with problematic habits. You’re channeling through distractions and toxic people. Speaking everything into existence is essential because, yes, you are serious this year. Whether you practice what you preach from day one or halfway through the year, your resolutions are layered with all your experiences, values, and desires. In the last few years, the snort and tort of New Year’s resolutions has hailed social media and turned positive thinking into a joke. To say it’s truthfully influenced people in partaking in the tradition, or just admitting that they did, is beyond us. Nonetheless, there’s a few things that should be said, regarding resolutions.
How long does it take to commit to your resolutions? Photo by Chelyse Prevost.
Being college students, we’re quite well-versed on the concept of saving everything, from minutes of sleep to the last few dollars in our bank accounts. The same way we learn to be this thorough, we must be just as bold in reducing, reusing, and recycling our goals. As redundant as it seems to chant the changes you want to see, even after a year’s time, it is just as important to be persistent in your accolades as it is to collect them. Sometimes, you just have to buckle down and eat your leftovers before stirring up a new pot. Keeping up with your old goals will help you cut back on spreading yourself thin, maximizing your focus on the goals you’ve already set for yourself. Whether you’re on to new goals this year or still working on your full plate, there’s no shame in reassessing old resolutions.
As we get this third week under our belts, I’d like to remind you that urban legend proclaims 21 whole days to form a habit. Truth is, timing is just a concept that many of us not only struggle with, but fail to take the time to understand. We often opt to manipulate our lives so much that we can’t grasp the reality that something like time is beyond us. Whether you’ve already fallen off your workout regimen or managed to stall on your latest project, remember to be fair to yourself. Be realistic in both the time you set aside for your resolution as well as the breakdown of timing in all your other priorities. Think less of your resolutions as installments and more as investments. If you’ve ever taken an Economy course, you know that the timing of an investment is everything. The more time you put into fundamentally building and securing the means of your goals, the less likely it’ll be sabotaged by the bad timing of the world around us. Keep in mind that your resolutions operate on your timeline, and not anyone else’s.
The same way you buy clothes in your size and register for classes around your schedule, you should make sure your resolutions fit you. Sometimes our resolutions fail not because you have to much on your plate or your not giving yourself enough time, but because they’re simply not your goals. Our generation represents the wave of intense inclusiveness in each of our lives through social media. As easy as it is to be inspired by the lives of the people we respect, we can make the mistake of wanting to take on certain lifestyles based off of what they seem to be. Not that your perspective is wrong, but there’s often times a thin line between what you want and what you want to feel. To avoid any misconceptions, discover what your resolutions mean to you before they’re set in stone. Seeking out the subconscious and conscious motives for your resolutions will solidify your resolutions as yours and ensure that they’re geared for your success. In other words, don’t rent your goals, own them. Take the time to consider time and keep at your recycled resolutions. After all, the cyclic negativity around forming New Year’s resolutions only matters if you let it. Make 2018 matter.
Featured image by Chelyse Prevost.
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