Happy 2025. If you are like most Type A students at McGill, chances are you made a list of New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you’ve also made a mood board, a list of predictions for the year, and a to-do list for the past week. You are not alone. About 49 per cent of young adults aged 18-29 made at least one resolution in 2024. Unfortunately, only about eight per cent of people who make such resolutions accomplish them.
Many people who fail to meet their resolutions reportedly do so because their expectations are unrealistic. At the core of New Year’s resolutions lies an obsession with achievements, leading people to evaluate time well spent based on what they can accomplish.
What if, instead of adding to a list of unattainable goals, we got comfortable with trying to achieve less—where might that take us? Would it be so bad to do nothing new and be comfortable with who we already are? Adopting an approach of contentment would emphasize that our lives do not ultimately rely on how many things we accomplish; existing as a human being in the world is more than enough.
The time we have on this Earth is limited. By focusing on our potential future accomplishments, we remain perpetually unsatisfied and unable to appreciate the beauty of the present moment. New Year’s resolutions, as is the case with most goals, exist in the future. While we can take steps in the present to accomplish such goals, our idealized fixation would remain future-oriented—unsatisfied with what currently is and always wanting more as a result.
Ambition is certainly not a bad thing, but when we set so many goals for ourselves, we fail to admire the beauty of the world in front of us and inside of us. Conversely, rejecting the temptation to add New Year’s resolutions to our endless to-do list compels us to reckon with the boredom and overwhelming vastness of our existence. This can be uncomfortable for many people, a fact that inspires their pursuit of a variety of external outlets to stay occupied. Some resort to books, video games, sports, alcohol, school, work, or resolutions. While some may be more or less positive than others, they are all distractions. After all, being alone with one’s thoughts can be a scary place for so many, and rightly so.
Our assumed obligation to productivity and self-improvement can feel even more overwhelming when considering the overstimulation of our globalized world. We live in an hyper-connected world in which we can take cross the globe in hours, reach any friend any time with one text or call, or order a new pair of shoes online to be delivered the next day.. New Year’s resolutions tend to fall prey to similar delusions of attainability. But time and effort are not unlimited, and there is only so much we can—or should—try to accomplish. This is a cold, hard truth, but a truth nonetheless.
By giving up on the goal of perpetual self-improvement, we can find a new sense of worth that does not regard our human experience as a means to an end, but rather an end in itself. So what if we don’t get the perfect GPA, land the best summer internship, attain the killer body, follow the healthiest diet, or amass the highest savings? In the grand schemes of our lives, these goals are almost meaningless, especially in comparison to this beautiful thing we call life; it is inherently precious, and there is nothing we need to accomplish to make it more valuable than it already is.
