New Year, New Me
Happy February! My apologies for not posting for the last month- it has truly been a crazy start to the new year. There’s been work, busy weekends, friends birthdays to celebrate, wild nights out in Chicago… so it’s taken me a little bit to get comfortable with the new pace of life now that I am actively a month into my new role at work and also looking for apartment options to move to very soon (hey, if there are any real estate agents looking for a part time job where they are paid in Andes mints, please hit me up).
Fun Fact: one of my new years resolutions this year was to post in more of a routine, and we seriously got one post in before I messed it up! Ironically enough, it has officially also been a month since National Quitters day – what I discovered was a national holiday last year and thought I’d share as the focal point of this week’s entry. National Quitters Day, celebrated on the second Friday of January, centers around the little-known statistic that over 30% of the people that make new years resolutions will quit on them on that day, just two weeks after taking them on. In a two year interval, the same article reports on average people will slip up on their resolutions 14 total times. Yikes.
Why did I find this fascinating? According to an Ink article, only 41% of people even make resolutions anymore, and of those – 9% actually achieve them each year on average. But of YOUNG ADULTS aged 18-24, 59% make resolutions- a huge increase from the general population. I find it sad that so many young people link themselves to resolutions they don’t see through. And not because I think any less of them for not seeing them through, but because I think our generation deserves to feel proud of what we’ve accomplished. I’m writing this entry to encourage those resolution-makers that they aren’t failing alone, and that by shooting for realistic targets, they can always surpass milestones without just checking something off a box.
I think this whole thing starts with recognizing that we all have a lot more pressure behind the resolutions we set than we even realize. We may think we’re just saying “go to the gym more often” to better ourselves, but when we fail to hit a certain number on a scale, or a number of days each week at the gym, we beat ourselves up about it because we allow it to reflect on our self-worth and resilience.
There are so many holidays in our year around rebirth – groundhog day (hey thanks for the early Spring, is there anyway we can hold the groundhog to that this year?), Valentines day (thank god that one’s over LOL), and Easter, for the most immediate few. I think that’s because humans have an innate desire to scrap what they’ve built instead of struggling through when things get difficult. We want to get it “perfect” the first go-around, so when we discover the hard way we can’t reach our own unattainable goals, we all wind up frustrated. So we throw the whole thing away and say… maybe next time? Maybe next month? Maybe next year?
Think you aren’t guilty of this? Have you ever told yourself you were going to do something at 5pm, only for the clock to hit 5:04 and you didn’t do it… so might as well as wait until 6, right? Or set an alarm for 9:10, and snoozed right to 9:30 because you aren’t going to be on time anyway? I think it’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, the way we – trust me, I’m super guilty of this too- naturally want to fail miserably more than we’d like to fail slightly. Its harder to bounce back from a wave while surfing then just to go under and tell yourself you’ll get it next time. Or… I assume it is? I haven’t done a lot of surfing in my life.
In any case, I decided to write a short entry today to remind us all that you are more than your failed new years resolutions. If you’ve fallen victim to quitter’s day – whether last month or six months from now- don’t wait until next year to pick yourself back up. You’ve still got 10 months of this year to go!
2024 is going to fly by, so I hope we all get to make the best of it- leap years and all. I’m headed to Japan this week… so expect an EXCITING blog once I’m back. And until then…
Sayonara!