As we quickly approach the end of 2022, one thing has been playing over in my mind. How did my year start, and where am I now? I find myself comparing my life to just months back in May, a grade 10 student, ready to take on the challenges of the final IGCSE exams, and the sense of accomplishment I felt when they were over. As I take a look back on my year, I start to think back on my New Year’s resolutions; December 31st 2021, sitting in my room with a pencil and paper, writing how I wanted to study hard for my finals, and all the other things that I wanted out of my 2022.
I can say with almost 100% certainty that you have heard the term ‘New Year's resolutions’ at some point in your life, maybe even had a few yourself. Maybe, that means you have heard the stigma that they never last. A New Year’s resolution by definition is “a firm decision made on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day to do or refrain from doing something over the course of the coming year.” Or in Layman's terms: setting a goal you want to accomplish or a new habit you want to learn by the time the New Year passes.
A few questions that I’ve always asked were: “Why do we set New Year’s resolutions?”, “Why January 1st?”, “What makes the New Year special?”. And as I’ve sat and pondered these questions, I’ve looked back on my own past resolutions and the intent behind them.
It is said that the first group of people to ever set New Year’s resolutions were the ancient Babylonians, around 4,000 years ago. They made promises to their gods to pay their debts and return objects they had borrowed. These promises were the early versions of the modern day resolution. If the Babylonians kept their promises, their gods would bring good to them the following year. For early Christians, the first day of a new year became an occasion for reflecting on one’s past mistakes and resolving to be better in the future.
So to speak, the Babylonians made their ‘resolutions’ as a promise to someone else, but the New Year’s resolutions we see today are made for oneself, a marker of an improvement we want to make by the year’s end.
So why January 1st? Why not any other day of the year? According to researchers at Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania, "temporal landmarks" - specific dates and days - are more likely to encourage us to set ourselves goals. In one of their studies, they created two separate groups of people and asked them to set a goal for themselves and a start date. The first group was given a list of dates in the same formatting while the second was given a list of dates with Thursday, March 20th marked out as the first day of spring. Those in the latter group were much more likely to choose the 20th of March as their start date. The researchers suggested that the idea of the ‘first day’ was associated with new beginnings and starting afresh, hence was more appealing.
In another study they conducted, they looked at Google search trends in association with common goals. Through this, they found that words such as ‘diet’ peaked at beginnings, whether it be a new week, new month, or new year. This was also found to be true in the gym logs at their universities, with the number of visits increasing at the start of new weeks or new semesters. This marker of time passing, the word ‘new’, gives us the perception that we are being given a chance to start a new chapter.
So yes, it may put us on hold for a little bit of time. We may not start something new as soon as we possibly can. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. We as humans like to think that specific periods of time can help signify habits/hobbies we want to implement in our lives. When I set myself goals at 2.00pm on a random Wednesday, there is no marker as to when I want to have it complete, there’s nothing special to remind me of my motivation to start something new. And while they may not always stick, an internal motivator to start something different is on a ‘new’ day. A Monday, the first day of the month, or even, January 1st.
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