December is slowly but surely dwindling down, which means one thing: people are starting to draft their New Year’s resolutions. 

Normally, I’d be right there with them. I’d be telling everyone how I plan to start saving money, make better use of my gym membership and possibly even take up a new hobby. I would make anywhere from three to eight substantial goals, somehow thinking that I would have more time than I did this year when in reality, I already have more planned for 2025 than I did in the past 12 months. 

But then, by the time February comes along, I’m always further from reaching my goals than I was on Jan. 1. 

This failure to resolve my resolutions always leaves me feeling defeated. How could I be bad at resolutions? I am usually fine at checking off to-do lists; in fact, it is one of the things I’m best at. I wanted to know if I was alone in this feeling. 

My friends all agreed that following through on resolutions feels a lot more impossible than it seems when you make them. But when we make a random goal for ourselves in June, it suddenly feels so much easier. What is it about goal-setting from late December to early January that causes stress?

I came across a blog post called “My anti-New Year’s resolutions,” where the author expresses a similar sentiment of not feeling able to complete resolutions. The blogger had a good point — maybe the trick is not to make resolutions about what we should be adding or fixing, but rather what bad habits we should be trying to remove from our lives. And maybe it helps to detach ourselves from the traditional concept of resolutions. 

Another reason why I think New Year’s resolutions are a bad idea is because the whole thing feels forced. Instead of seeing room for improvement, I’m picking one day to restart my life. It’s customary rather than necessary. 

Still, I don’t think New Year’s resolutions are obsolete. Goal-setting is a great practice, and when we do achieve them, we feel amazing. To become better at making — and following through on — New Year’s resolutions, there might be some better ways to go about the process. 

For one, it helps to reframe the concept in the way that the blog post talked about. Making these “anti-resolutions” can be more beneficial and manageable. Setting realistic expectations for yourself might also help; you don’t have to choose something that feels out of reach. 

When the approach becomes less focused on results and more about cleaning out your life of those unhelpful roadblocks, it feels more achievable. It’s okay if a goal takes days, months, or even years to complete, and it’s okay if there are setbacks and obstacles on the way there. 

The best goal we can set for ourselves is to give ourselves grace and celebrate the small victories. If we can say that we tried our best and gave ourselves the same leniency we expect from others, we can make more progress. 

It should be our goal to make our lives easier, not harder, especially when a big milestone like a new year is upon us. We should enter it with as much compassion for ourselves as we have for others, and with an understanding that things like New Year’s resolutions are only societally constructed; they aren’t real. We decide what our pace is, and we decide what success looks like to us.