I always fumble my New Year’s resolutions. But I have a fresh plan for a new me in 2024

Many of us want big, sweeping changes to our lives, but without smaller, concrete steps to work towards, we can fall short of our goals

As the year winds down, I usually open up a new journal. It's really exciting to touch and see and smell the pages that will hold all the ideas, thoughts, and visions of the coming year. Feels a bit fancy too. And I start imagining that it can be the starting point for a better me.

I start writing about the ways I want to focus and change my life. All the things I can do to start anew.

It all comes to a head with New Year’s resolutions. I list down all I need to do to achieve the perfect life. I pore over it, again and again, trying to etch the ultimate manifesto for complete happiness.

But, partway into next year, I’ve already strayed from the path I once saw so clearly. I end up feeling disappointed in myself and vow to do better. But then the cycle repeats.

Why? Why is it that I find it so hard to stick to the plans I set out to better myself and improve my own life?

For a long time, I thought it might be me. That I was incapable of making progress. That I was setting the bar too high.

If, like me, you struggle with your self-confidence, your resolutions can sound a bit too good to be true. And, as our old habits kick in and we lose faith in ourselves, those goals can seem further and further out of reach. Eventually they seem so unrealistic that they fade from our minds, erasing whatever we were trying to cultivate.

So maybe I had to lower my own expectations. Stop asking too much of myself.

But as the new year closed in again, I began to carefully consider where I went wrong all those times before and how I could shift away from my usual doom and gloom.

That’s when I began to see a pattern. I found that, quite often, I stumbled in the first two or three months. As I looked back, I was struck by how much energy and enthusiasm I started every annual project with. And how quickly that faded. Maybe I was tackling this the wrong way.

The thing is, every time I started, I would try and do everything all at once. Make every major change immediately and force myself to stick to them. It was a shock to my system. I was making drastic changes to my life and expecting myself to adjust.

Then, when I made a mistake, it felt almost comfortable because I was returning to the routines and habits of my usual life. This slowly eroded my drive, willpower and patience. And when I couldn’t keep up, it all started drifting away. This fed back into my feelings of inadequacy and the lingering worry that I would never reach my full potential.

With this realisation, I began looking forward to making this round of resolutions a bit different.

So, I started with wrapping up my thoughts on 2023. I went in a straight line through the year, cataloguing what I learned.

Then, I made a small section that highlighted all my achievements this year – both major and minor. A true account of what I had accomplished.

Then, on a fresh page, I set out my intentions for 2024. What I want next year to be like, the guiding theme that would focus my ideas for the next year.

Then, once I had a sense of my main goals, I began to break them down into smaller sub-goals. These are easier to conceive, actionable, and have more manageable time frames. The key is to start small and stay consistent.

To help maintain this constituency, I decided to focus on three main goals each month. But, I also built in a bit of flexibility. Even if I failed to keep up on one occasion, I could shift that particular goal to the next month without throwing the entirety of my plans into chaos.

Armed with this new blueprint, I think I will be able to develop my patience and self-confidence and grow as a person.

For a long time, I thought that I had no right to dream big. To hope for substantial changes in myself and my life. I thought it was inappropriate, especially when I believed the scope of what I could accomplish was so limited. I felt suffocated as the horizons of my life shrank in front of my eyes.

But now I realise that dreaming big was never the issue. It was that I failed to give myself a proper chance. Next year, I hope to work towards more manageable milestones that are clear, simple, and achievable. These smaller goals won’t immediately rush me into a future of complete happiness, but they could be the first steps on that path.

Little by little, I hope to make that journey. And, along the way, I hope to stand up for myself a little more.

This article is part of Stripe, bdnews24.com's special publication focusing on culture and society from a youth perspective.