As the new year kicks in, people set new year’s resolutions. There are new opportunities and a feeling of a fresh start once you enter a new year. We have mindsets of positivity and wanting to be a better self.

The resolutions most people tend to attempt to follow deal with loosing weight, quitting smoking and spending less time on technology.

Resolutions are achievable, and are a healthy and helpful way to start off the new year. But, for example, when you tell yourself you are going to quit losing weight but you don’t make the disciplines to start, your resolutions will fail.

Self discipline is necessary in achieving your goals, which are completely practical but you just need to make the steps to try. According to IFLScience, “About half of all adults make new year’s resolutions. However, fewer than 10% manage to keep them for more than a few months.”

We have a problem with self discipline. This starts with making a list and starting small and progressively going bigger. If your goal is to read everyday, you need to start small and go big. Set a time for when you can read everyday, then go from 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, and progressively get bigger and make the time to discipline yourself.

Another factor that plays into the difficulty of following new years resolutions is something called the “false hope syndrome.” False hope syndrome is when you set unrealistic goals for yourself. It is characterized by someone’s unrealistic expectations of how they will change their behavior or complete their goal.

False hope syndrome gets in the way of accomplishing our resolutions. When we set unrealistic goals, we don’t follow through with them. Then, we have a negative outlook on new year’s resolutions because we think they don’t work, but the problem is that we are not taking the right steps to attain them.

I believe that all goals are possible to accomplish, but it is only with small steps, healthy thinking and people to encourage you that can help you in achieving your goal at the end of the year.

Setting new year’s resolutions can be helpful and refreshing if you create realistic goals and work to achieve them. You need to actually make the steps to get to your goals. If you want to be a better person, do the things that will make you better.

“I set one big resolution for this year,” junior Cleo Zagurski said. “It is to spend more time with friends and family compared to spending so much time with school. And I am a big list person, so I cut my resolutions into little steps and check points.”

Other people have a not so positive approach in new year’s resolutions. “I think resolutions are helpful but I feel like just because it’s new years doesn’t mean you should just start something you wanna do,” junior Toby Kellner claimed. “So, if you want to do something you should just do it and not wait until the new year.”

While I understand the fact that waiting to start self-disciplining yourself until the new year is odd when you think about it, reflecting in the month of December the things you want and setting goals for the new year based on that is having a healthy mindset.

New year’s resolutions are not an unideal concept. It is a healthy, renewing concept which works if you make the right steps to accomplish them. Putting goals into small steps and check points, just as Zagurski does, will help you in fulfilling your goals for the new year.