New Year??? Resolution

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At the beginning of every year, many people make New Year resolutions. I keep wondering why people still keep on making resolutions every year when they were not able to keep the previous year’s own. The first time I heard of the term ‘New Year Resolution’ was in January 1996, I had just resumed second term in JSS2 in a boarding school and everyone kept asking everyone, ‘what is your new year resolution?’ as if we must all have one because it is a prerequisite to being promoted to the next class. I am not sure I ‘formed’ any that year but one thing I know is this, I don’t make new year resolutions. Let us examine some of the reasons why people find it hard to keep their New Year resolutions even though they were really passionate about it when the year began.


Firstly, some New Year resolutions are just unrealistic. A neighbour of mine said that she was going to stop drinking coke totally. While stopping coke drinking might not be a big deal to me, I think it might be really difficult for her, considering the fact that she had 5 bottles of coke a day before. She is addicted to coke (yes, it can be addictive) so I think a more realistic thing for her to do is to reduce the amount she takes at first, adjust a bit and then eliminate it totally. Deciding to stop totally all of a sudden will just send her back to where she started before and the end of the story might even be worse than the beginning. There goes the downfall of a New Year resolution.

Another reason why New Year resolutions fail is because of laziness. Some people don’t just have the discipline and determination to see their resolution through because it might require breaking some old and stubborn habits. When they see how difficult and tasking it will be, they just give up along the way because they have decided that ‘it is just not possible’. There goes another New Year resolution down the drain.

Other New Year resolutions fail because the people that made it made it out of the ‘band wagon’ bug that bit them. It is the rave of the moment, every one is making one, so let me make one too. They forget that ‘everyone’ knows what they are pursuing or what is pursuing them. They also forget that ‘everyone’ won’t be there to monitor the progress of their resolution because we are all on an Oyo (on your own) level. So when, ‘everyone’ is no more is watching and the rave is over, they drop the New Year resolution like a hot coal.

This is my own opinion about New Year resolutions. . I don’t believe in New Year resolutions. I believe that for most people, they don’t work. I believe that we should all resolve to do the best we can in our lives and those of others regardless of whether it is new year or not. What is New Year anyway? It is just the end of 365 days. Why can’t we resolve to do better at the end of 364 days or 363 or 362 or 361 or 360 or……?