New Year’s Resolutions: 2025 Edition

I’m kickstarting the new year with a whole new set of new year’s resolutions. As older viewers of this blog would know, back in the days, I used to make resolutions and report back on them. But, as my career started to come along, and I got busier (and let’s be honest, this is low key always the excuse with me), that just stopped. But I never stopped making resolutions. It’s all on my notion planner. 

I’ve always gotten into the habit of keeping both a digital and physical journal, and as repetitive as it probably is, for me, it’s been pretty helpful. As I take the next few days to get my planner completely ready for the year, I’ll share my process with y’all too.

But, back to my new year plans. 

Why Do I Bother With New Year’s Resolutions?

I mean, I’m old, and let’s be honest, that’s something most of us did back in elementary school. So, why am I so fixated on year’s resolutions? Well, the answer’s quite simple actually. 

I like being goal oriented. I feel like we’re living in a world that’s all about instantaneous gratification, and that makes feeling happy quite difficult. As someone who’s struggled with that all my life (my first reaction when I got my promotion was to stress about my new responsibilities), having new goals for the new year helps with having something to look forward to.

Most of my goals currently are quite intangible, frankly unpredictable and extremely circumstantial. And the problem with adulting is that life happens. So, having resolutions really helps me have goals that are both tangible (I literally have them written out on a page in my planner) and something I can actively work towards.

I like being able to look at my goals once every quarter and see where I’m at. It keeps me grounded, helps prevent burn out, and honestly, helps me reorient myself when I’m feeling low.

Depression is a real issue, and I have had days where the only reason I’m able to show up for work is because I literally just need to boot up my laptop and log in. And it sucks being unable to get out of bed. My new year’s resolutions, especially the goals around my weight, help me make it out of bed, if not out of my apartment. But that’s practically an embodiment of living in the 2020s, isn’t it?

We live in truly unprecedented times. Sometimes I just want to fast forward life to when I have grandchildren and great grandchildren, so I can reminisce about how different things were back in the day. But, that’s not possible, so yeah.

I feel like I got a bit too serious for this blog. Anyway, I still hope you found something good to take away from this part. Moving on to better things.

The History of New Year’s Resolutions

As a self-reported history buff, I will admit that I like to look into the history of things before getting invested in them. I have way too many books on stuff like the history of the world, cosmology and even society. Anyway, the point is, one of the things four year old me found fascinating was that new year’s resolutions, though they appear to be a modern trend, are actually an ancient tradition, going back thousands of years. The Ancient Babylonians, Syrians and people living around Mesopotamia, all made resolutions at the start of their new year, some 4,000 years ago. Seriously, here’s what NatGeo says about it.

Of course, their new year was around the time of spring equinox, when they planted new crops, but it’s kind of neat. My family celebrates Nowruz, which is the Persian New Year and that’s also around the spring equinox. I think it’s kind of cool how, though thousands of years have passed, some cultures still retained this trend. My grandmother insists that the Persian calendar is more accurate than the Gregorian calendar, and so, every year, I celebrate not one, but two birthdays. So, this year, I’m turning 28 before I turn 27. Cue incoming existential crisis.

But it wasn’t just in ancient mesopotamia. An iteration of the modern new year’s resolutions was also observed by ancient Rome, under Julius Caesar. Of course he established January 1 as the new year, and the Romans would offer sacrifices to Janus (the god the month was named after) and make promises for the coming year. Janus symbolizes looking back, reflecting and then looking ahead into the future. So, like, yeah. That makes sense. I usually spend January getting things sorted for the new year. And I’m sure many people do that, too. 

New Year Goal Setting: How Do You Do It?

So, going back to setting your own new resolutions. How do you go about it, you may ask? And, most importantly, how do you make sure you achieve them?

In my personal experience, I like breaking my goals down into smaller, more achievable goals that can be done in a few months, rather than the whole year. This allows me to get back on track if I fall off. Of course, it’s easy to get completely derailed, and that’s fine. Your new year resolutions are yours and yours alone. You answer to no one but yourself. So, it’s fine to go easy on yourself. Here’s what’s helped me over the years.

1. Commit to Your New Year Resolutions

As with everything in life, you need to be committed to your resolutions. Do you actually want to achieve what you say you’ll do? As an example, I’d love to say that I’m going to learn Japanese by the end of the year. But I also know how busy I am, and my schedule won’t allow me to practise German every now and then. How do I expect to learn Japanese, which is a hard language for us Latin speakers, in a year?

I will, eventually, at some point, learn the language but it’s definitely not happening any time soon.

2. Be Realistic 

Again, building on the point I’ve already mentioned, being realistic is critical to setting achievable resolutions. You don’t have to set high, lofty goals for yourself. Just set simple goals that you think will greatly benefit you.

3. Be Flexible

As I’ve already said before, life happens and there’s not much you can do about it. So, what do you do? It’s best to have goals that allow for some flexibility. Like, for me, I need to achieve my weight goals before the end of the year, but I’m going through something at work. It literally happened a week ago. 

And because of how busy I’ve been, I’ve only gone to the gym twice in the past few days. The solution? I’ve broken my resolution to a bi-annual one. I’ve broken down my weight goal into Jan-May and then June- Dec. This will make life easier in May, and help me focus on going to the gym more when things settle down.

4. Track Your Progress

Tracking is critical. Most of my resolutions are all about tracking and making sure I’m on track, with room to grow. I think a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly check is a good metric to make sure you’re on track.

5. Set Reminders and Reward Yourself

For goals that might be more long-term, further along the year, I’ve created reminders. That ideal weight goal thing I was talking about earlier? I’ve set a reminder for May 1st, so I can see how far I’ve come along, and reward myself. As a bonus, my birthday’s on the very next day, so it’ll be an awesome reward to myself!

My New Year’s Resolutions

So, without waffling more, here’s my new year’s resolutions:

What’re your resolutions for the new year? Do you have any tips that you think can help? Let me know, and once again, happy new year’s!