New Year and the story of resolutions!
By: Mohmod Irfan Shah
The beginning of a new calendar year is marked by celebrations across the globe and different cultures celebrate the occasion in different ways with certain things generally in common. The festivity associated with this occasion is no less than a religious festival, or even more, in today’s era. People mark it as a holiday to forget the sorrows of the previous year and welcome the coming year with hopes and aspirations of contentment, happiness and joy. And all this in the face of the fact that one more year has gone by and the earthly life has shortened a little more.
For many people, the Common theme of New Year is to look back on the last 12 months and reflect on how we’ve progressed and what we’ve accomplished or lacked to accomplish. People celebrate the changes and trials that they have overcome and think that the event would usher a new period of accomplishment and success.
The beginning of a new year is a time for introspection and consideration of possibilities, so it doesn’t matter whether you celebrate or party if you are seriously considering to bring about some positive changes in life. Most of us recapitulate; take out some time for ourselves to think about what we did in the last year, which affected our mental, physical and social life and come up with a positive approach for the upcoming year. But from my personal experience, by evaluating yourself at the end of the year, there are least chances that you are going to be better in any way as we have a tendency to gradually evolve and come to terms with changes.
While there is absolutely no harm in composing a list of things one would want to achieve, but there is no assurance that one will achieve that just because of the upcoming year- it will take efforts and great dedication to change even a small bad habit, leave aside larger behavioral issues. Better is to get ready for the forthcoming failures and keep a firm belief that you will surpass them with confidence.
There is no proof of overnight success with the beginning of the new calendar. So, it’s better make an effort to be optimistic while remaining realistic. Make a plan, but be prepared to change course if the situation changes and demands so. While at a party or some function it’s definite, you’ll have plenty of company when you’re deciding about attempting to make positive changes in your life, but at the end you will have to go back home alone, face and tackle whatever is going to come up in the coming year alone.
On New Year’s Eve, there’s nothing better than toasting to the fact that we’ve survived another year of life’s turmoil that too in this pandemic where we lost many of our loved ones. In many ways, the trials of the past two years have been beyond distressing; either people lost their jobs, or their loved ones or their dedication towards work. Many of us had kept some goals for these two years, but few people succeeded. And we still are surviving in the pandemic, so let’s be positive, confident and ready to tackle what life comes up with.
New Year’s resolutions are set by people all over the globe every year in order to achieve their goals, improve their overall health, and generally make their lives better. Many people succeed in following their New Year’s resolutions, but many others fail to do so.
According to a ‘Discover Happy Habits survey’, 75% of people who make New Year’s resolutions keep them for a week. After two weeks, it reduces to 71%, to 64% after a month and six months later, 46% of those who set resolutions still keep them. After six months, only 4% of people who have similar goals but do not make a resolution still succeed.
Beginnings and changes in our lives are sparked by the start of a new year; however, that spark should last throughout the year rather than fizzle out after a few days or weeks. Instead of making emotional resolutions that you may later realise to be impracticable or uninteresting, you should learn to make practical resolutions that are based on common sense and facts rather than emotion.
A fresh beginning may occur on any day of the year if you make the decision to start anything new. Although a new year does not immediately transform us or our attitude towards life, it may serve as a natural beginning point for altering our thoughts and actions.
Writer is a student pursuing B.E Civil Engineering at SSM College of Engineering. [email protected]
