thank you what is your New Year's resolution for some of us it's to be more productive for others is to lose weight or simply be healthier for you it might be to spend more time with friends and family or finally write that book that you've been putting off for the past year when the clock strikes midnight on January 1st most of us already have a list of goals we wish to achieve things we hope to be better at and habits we desperately want to let go of all within the next 365 days there's a newfound
sense of hope when we flip that last calendar page in reality it's just another day but to most of us it feels like a fresh start a new beginning and so we stack up all the things we want to change about ourselves and other goals we hope to accomplish yet year after year most of us fail to achieve all if any of these goals there's a staggering lack of follow-through with New Year's resolutions most of us find it very difficult to stick to them we start with a bundle of energy and motivation but all that
phases of the year goes on gyms that are packed in January are in back to normal capacity by March healthy eating habits stop as soon as a stressful life event occurs and saving habits fade away once an emergency that requires Financial attention happens to add insult injury not only do we end up not achieving what we set out to do but that failure makes us feel even less motivated to make the next goal to pursue the next dream it leads us down a path that slowly convinces us that these goals aren't even worth setting in
the first place it's no wonder that the older you get the less likely you are to create New Year's resolutions the screams loud bang of fireworks and light shows in the sky as the clock strikes midnight get less exciting with every passing year when you think about it like that the situation seems quite grim but it doesn't have to be this way the truth is one of the biggest reasons most people fall short of the resolutions is they don't have the willpower and mental fortitude to push through the difficult situations but by learning from the
stoics we can better understand not just how to follow through on our set agenda for the year but how to create proper goals right off the bat because while it's true that barely 10 of people stick to their New Year's resolutions nothing says that you can't be one of those people understanding New Year's resolutions from the stoics point of view begins like all things with stoicism with the question of control what is in our control people often like to pin down very ambitious and quite frankly unrealistic goals at the start of the year a lot
of times we end up with goals that are beyond our control which sets us up for failure before we even got the chance to try let's say your goal for the year is to lose weight the first step in the stoic handbook would be to figure out and acknowledge what isn't in our control eating healthy and exercising regularly are within our control but other things like how ripped we look for example are largely determined by how fat is distributed across our body which in turn is determined largely by genetics so if our goal is to
look a certain way instead of Simply to lead a healthier lifestyle we're setting ourselves up for failure there are other more apparent truths people tend to ignore when drafting the resolutions things like the fact that our willpower is finite when people decide to become more productive or fight off an addiction they fail to realize that the Machinery that allows us to fight our urges is an infinite every time we fend off our craving for some unhealthy food for example it becomes that much harder to maintain that discipline later in the day that's one of the
main reasons people that start out strong with their resolutions don't end up following through with them to the end at the beginning of the year our willpower is refreshed we're riding on the high of starting from the beginning but as days turn into weeks and weeks into months that willpower is drained ever so slowly such that the motivation that we started the year with just can't carry us any further stoicism preaches that we should be aware of these mental and physical limitations pretending that we'll be able to strong arm our desires is naive a better
method of sticking to our goals then will be to minimize Solutions where we have to use willpower humans are naturally wired to take the path of least resistance so let that path be the one that you want for the year if you want to lead a healthier life start by giving out all the junk food you have in the house and replacing it with healthier options that way when you're hungry for a snack it'll be easier to grab an apple from the fridge then drive to the store to get chips this is a much better
approach than trying to make it from one cheat meal to the next if you want to work out more pay for gym membership to the gym that's closest to where you live yes it might not be the fanciest or have the best trainers but the easier it is for you to get there the more likely you are to keep working consistently through the year for those who have the willpower to push through we're usually stopped by external forces like having a blown AC just as the heat wave of summer rolls around or a bad breakup
that forces us to binge eat as we cry ourselves to sleep every night the reasons these things stop us from pursuing our goals aren't because they're inherently bad but more so because they're unexpected it's just like rain when we're out without an umbrella and it starts to rain we feel bad but we don't cry and stop everything we were doing because while getting drenched is a bad thing we've learned to accept the possibility of rain and in turn had to deal with its consequences we go home dry our clothes make a hot cup of cocoa
and get on with our day we need to learn to do the same in every aspect of Our Lives we need to realize that bad things will happen that's just life we can either treat these bad occurrences like a tsunami destined to destroy everything we've built or we can treat them like rain just a tiny temporal inconvenience according to the stoics that's the difference between experiencing a setback and suffering from it setbacks are a part of life their normal routine and we should expect them but we must learn to not get beaten by these setbacks
instead philosophy Professor William B Irvine says it might be helpful to think of setbacks as a form of flattery from the stoic Gods a chance to prove to yourself that you are more than that adversary this removes the knee-jerk reaction of why me and instead allows you to focus more on what needs to be done to scale the hurdle and continue your journey towards your vision most of us think of the year as a Sprint rather than the marathon that it is which is why once we experience any setback we often throw everything out and
say that one dreaded sentence I'll just start again next year by switching our minds from a Sprint to a marathon we can focus on the process without worrying too much about the end goal instead of saying you want to do 20 pull-ups by the end of the year and beating yourself up when you haven't reached that goal in March it's better to instead give yourself the goal of trying to do one more pull-up simple as it sounds this allows you to focus more on the process of doing a pull-up and getting better each time without
worrying too much about some arbitrary end goal the reason we often wait until the new year to set goals is because of something called The Fresh Start effect orized by its name we're more likely to set new targets for ourselves when we feel like we're having a fresh start that's why you're more likely to decide to make a life change on Monday or just after a holiday but the truth is at no particular date on the calendar is more special than another Monday isn't better than Wednesday and January 1st isn't any better than March 13th
the only thing special about these days and dates is the idea of worth that we've placed on them and while it's good to take full advantage of this Fresh Start effect it's counterproductive to tie herself so strongly to them that we don't make the changes we need until we get a fresh start so if you've already fallen short of your goals you don't have to wait for next year to start again because today is as good as any to start again Happy New Year
