Resolutions are not wars on yourself

According to Oliver Burkeman, you should wait until mid-January before you set your resolutions for the year. This is a summary of takeaways from Oliver Burkeman’s interview for The Atlantic where he shares thoughts on how to identify resolution for new year.

• Setting intentions for personal changes) helps you get a lot of clarity about which kinds of resolutions are really worth using your precious time on and which are not.

• I don’t think fresh starts like that (completely afresh and perfect) are actually possible, and I don’t think aiming to make them is the healthiest way to change.

• The crucial question we have to ask ourselves is why we’re doing things.

• One of the pitfalls of New Year’s–resolution culture is that it encourages us all to buy into the idea that you need to make some big change in order to be a minimally acceptable, worthwhile person. Maybe reconciling yourself to certain ways that you are is a more powerful thing.

• What if you were never going to change the thing about you that you so desperately long to change? I think, for a lot of people, that’s quite a liberating thought. What possibilities might open up if you knew that you weren’t going to change that thing?

• Resolutions to be resilient—ones that you’re going to be able to stick with even when life doesn’t run as perfectly as you planned.

• Resolving to do things “day-ish”—the notion that you can make your plan for change a lot more sustainable if it’s not so rigid that one missed day spells failure.

• I don’t think there’s anything helpful about resolutions that put you at war with yourself.

• There’s something appealing about the idea of just postponing New Year’s resolutions until the first week or two of January.

• It’s also important not to let the idea of changing your personality get in the way of just actually doing things differently.

Once you arrive at the kind of resolutions that you wish to make, evaluate the balance between realistic and ambitious.

Use these principles the next time you are setting up resolutions or rethink about your resolutions.

Image source: Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash