It’s the 4th of December and the January influx of bullshit resolution emails is soon to come flying into your inbox. Countless digital media marketing teams have been nestled in their shared office spaces the past few months for this special moment. We all know the story: they offer endless promises about how to accomplish your dream job, goal weight, or “how to be your best financial-self.” Well, before they beat me to it, I’m here to talk about it first.
New Year’s resolutions have been around for over 4,000 years. For early Christians, the new year marked a tradition of thinking about one’s past mistakes and resolving to do and be better in the future. In some aspects that has remained true although we’ve modernised it a bit with multi-billion dollar industries all trying to convince you to buy things so you can be “better” in the future.
Every year, being healthier is consistently the most popular New Year’s resolution, that includes eating healthier, exercising more and losing weight. Naturally, saving money is the next most popular resolution. It’s no surprise that both of these goals can easily be marketed to - better workout clothes, gym memberships, the 101 meal delivery options all promising that you’ll hit all your required macros. Banks, investment and cryptocurrency schemes all promise to help increase your wealth if you partner with them.
Come January, I can promise you that you’ll be zealously attacked into coming up with new year’s resolutions that we both know you won’t keep on top of. Every year after the Christmas period is over, and they’ve run out of overused ‘20 Gift Ideas for your Fitness Pal’ ideas, the echo of inadequacy can be explicit and is most definitely clear: “You’re still the same imperfect person you’ve always been and to succeed this year, you’ll need our help, our products.”
The fact is, you don’t.
We both know you don’t need Equinox or Third Space’s fancy gym. I work with someone who has a £127 monthly gym membership and the only thing she uses it for is the sauna and the bike, and she already owns a Peloton at home. Don’t be that person. You need a basic £30 gym membership that has basic weights and basic people in it. You’ll never survive a celebrity gym unless you are a celebrity.
Don’t buy into any of these bogus trends. A person’s concept of what self-improvement might entail can be so arbitrary that it’s no wonder people fail; the goals don’t mean anything to them partially because we’re part of an entangled consumer market. We’re told by our corporate influencers that we are failures if we are not thin, or rich, or part of hustle culture, or homeowners. The list of what we aren’t is how products are made and promoted to us. Because we then inherently feel that we’re behind our peers, we combat it by buying things excessively to settle our fears of failure and our inability to change. We look at ourselves and think “I could lose some weight, and [insert brand name] is having a sale now.” It becomes a chicken and egg scenario. Are we coming up with resolutions because brands are marketing to us and feeding us the idea that we need to change, or are we coming up with it on our own and then seeking that improvement through what we buy?
Put simply, corporate marketing manufactures a false sense of how we go about improving ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that the whole concept is fake. Seeking to improve ourselves is natural and a good thing. If we went our whole lives refusing to improve, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Resolutions just help us stick to our goals, and work alongside others to accomplish them. We set up “resolutions” to give ourselves something to achieve that year but, as with anything, it doesn’t work without a proper plan in place.
When coming up with resolutions for ourselves, most often people fail because they choose unrealistic objectives. That inevitably leads to self-doubt, a lack of motivation, and finally falling off the wagon and abandoning the idea altogether by February. Luckily, that doesn’t mean you’re resigned to your worst habits. Consistent habit change is possible, but not easy. It requires some form of motivation that comes from personal desire and self-improvement.
I’m not going to tell you how to make and keep your resolutions because there are 637 million results on google that could tell you how to do it, and without a doubt, there will be a TikTok millennial trend on setting new year’s goals that likely involves the latest passion project journal and wizardry pen to match. At the end of the day, if you really want to achieve your goal, you will figure out a way that works for you (most importantly).
Even though “New Year, New Me” is a dated idea that should most definitely be thrown out, the concept of it is valid. Getting an understanding of who you are on the 1st of January and who you are on the 31st of December can be exciting, especially when you set achievable goals. And yes, you can do it without buying things on sale. Trust me.