Why I Don't Believe in New Year's Resolutions

This year I expect to see many positive changes in my life. I am anticipating progress in my career and my marriage. I plan to become much better in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I joined a new gym for strength and conditioning (paid in full for a year). I bought an unlimited yoga pass (paid in full for a year). . . but I didn't make any New Year's resolutions.

I think Francis Spufford summed it up well in his description of the human propensity to foul* things up (HPtFTU): 

You’re lying in the bath and you notice that you’re thirty-nine and that the way you’re living bears scarcely any resemblance to what you think you’ve always wanted; yet you got here by choice, by a long series of choices for things which, at any one moment, temporarily outbid the things you say you wanted most.

This is why our New Year's resolutions fail; we choose what we want immediately rather than what we say we really want. We see this pop up again and again in our culture. C. S. Lewis said that our problem is not desires that are too strong, but rather that our desires are too weak. We do not hold out for that which really matters. Similar to the sentiment expressed by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, we have a tendency to exchange cold comfort for change.

Given my HPtFTU, which I believe we all possess, I don't believe that I can become a better person. (This is another discussion for another day.) I do, however, believe that I can learn to function better as a person. 

That is why I do not make New Year's resolutions, which typically involve large, lofty goals that I am unlikely to achieve. Rather than setting big goals at a somewhat arbitrary point in the year, I believe in intermittently setting small goals that are more achievable. Done in succession, these small goals and micro choices can lead to big changes over time.

Congratulations to those out there who have set big resolutions and followed through with them. I will not be among this crowd. I will have setbacks -- possibly devastating ones -- as time passes on, but I will be looking forward to the happiness that comes through achieving little goals accomplished by consistent effort and hard work.

*I softened the language a little here.