Image
People all around the globe have heard of a goal that surrounds the idea of achieving something for the year ahead of them. People make new years resolutions because they want to do something different or learn something new that they haven’t done before. New year's resolutions give people a whole year to achieve something big or small, but most underestimate the difficulty of achieving their goals in just one year. Especially, if they’re striving towards more than one. Lots of people create a list of goals for the New Year, but few make it past the first 2 weeks of January. In fact, there is a day literally called “Quitter’s Day,” which always falls on the 2nd Friday of January. This is because, according to daysoftheyear.com “Strava gave it the name to highlight how quickly motivation fades. It wasn’t meant to make fun of anyone.” Strava is a fitness app that noticed something interesting while looking at users' data.
New Year's resolutions usually fall into one of four categories:
Health & Fitness: Focusing on physical health like working out, eating healthier, or even just sleeping better.
Personal Development: Developing new skills or advancing skills already learned.
Financial & Money: Focusing on money and financial growth or advancing into a job or getting a job.
Relationships & Enjoyment: Focusing on making positive connections with other people.
Creating a New Year's resolution can be as outrageous or calm as you want, but having a plan on how you will complete it is very important.
Here are some goals these two students at North have:
Junior Holly Aylwin’s New Year’s resolution is “adding more hours on to my flute practice, playing new styles of music, learning harder pieces to improve my skills, and learning pieces for music college auditions.” This falls into the category of personal development; in playing the flute by learning new styles of music. Not every piece of music is the same, so Holly wants to branch off in order to be able to play in styles that music colleges might give her to play. Skills can be lost, but by practicing or repeating that competency for a long period of time, you can create habits, and that is one of the best things that can come out of a New Year’s resolution. learning new abilities or advancing the abilities you already know.
Sophomore Amisha Porwal’s New Year’s resolution is “to eat healthier and work out every day. I’m going to accomplish this by following a strict plan that I’ve made for myself. I made it by finding exercises that selectively focused on both cardio and toning.” This falls into the category of health and fitness.
Anyone can accomplish any type of goal if they have the mindset. Holly Aylwin and Amisha Porwal have goals in mind, and they are working hard to achieve them. New Year’s is a time to celebrate new beginnings and new chapters in our lives. You can’t change the past; you can only look back at it. You can’t change what will happen in the future; you can’t see it. But you can change the present. Go out and try new foods, and try playing basketball if you’ve never tried before because you shouldn’t say you can’t do something until you try. Happy New Year.
