Around this time of year lots of people are talking about their New Year’s Resolutions. Several days ago on New Year’s Eve I was at a party where a group friends and acquaintances all declared that 2018 would finally be the year they “get healthy” or “get fit.” But when you think about it, how many people actually attempt, stick to and accomplish their New Year’s Resolutions every year? Probably not very many. While setting goals related to health and wellness are vital for improving your life, here are five reasons you should stop making New Year’s Resolutions.

1. Most Things Worth Pursuing Take Longer Than A Year

Have you ever learned to play an instrument? Have you ever become fluent in a foreign language? Have you ever attempted to earn a prestigious certificate or degree? If so, were any of these things accomplished within a year? Probably not. The reality is that most things in life worth pursuing not only take longer than a year, but can even take a lifetime.

There’s no rule, of course, which states that a New Year’s Resolution must be accomplished within a year. But by declaring your resolution for the coming calendar year, you’re unconsciously telling yourself that you have twelve months to reach your goals. After several months of slow progress, it’s common for many people quit in frustration after concluding that their goal may take much longer to achieve than expected.

Instead of making a bold resolution for the coming year, work on dedicating a certain amount of time each week to the things that could improve your life. For example, rather than promise yourself to “get fit” this year, simply make it your goal to start visiting the gym 3 or 4 times a week. Also be sure to stick to it, regardless of the immediate results. That way you won’t set yourself up for disappointment if you’re not yet posing for fitness magazines by next December.

2. A Year is Too Long to Quit Bad Habits

Thinking in terms of calendar years can also be detrimental when it comes to resolutions which involve quitting a bad habit. If you promise yourself to “quit smoking in 2018,” you’re unconsciously giving yourself permission to keep smoking several months into the year because you have until the end of 2018 to accomplish your goal.

The same goes for quitting junk food or binge drinking. Stop putting these things off. Whether you’re reading this around New Year’s or sometime in the middle of the summer, the best time to quit your bad habits and harmful addictions is always now.

3. New Year’s Resolutions Are Often Too Vague

One of the most popular resolutions people make around this time of year is to “get healthy.” This is a vague goal and most people don’t even know where to start. I used to make this one of my resolutions in the past but I never ended up getting anywhere. Looking back, it’s easy to see why.

There are many different factors to being healthy on both a physical and emotional level. With so much to consider in regards to our health, many people don’t really know where to begin and end up making little progress as a result. Though admirable, simply promising yourself to “get healthy” is too unclear of a goal to really pursue seriously.

A better approach would be to start small with specific goals. If your knowledge on nutrition is lacking, make it your goal to educate yourself more on the topic. If you’ve always wanted to do a detox or cleanse, make it your goal to research and then try something like a juice fast for a predetermined period of time. If you’re having problems with stress and anxiety, promise yourself to meditate each day.

Once you see gradual, positive changes in one area of your life, you’ll naturally feel motivated to learn and experiment more. Eventually, this will lead to becoming a healthier person overall.

4. Many People Don’t Know What It is They Really Want

This goes beyond just health and wellness, but a major problem with New Year’s Resolutions is that most people simply don’t know what it is they really want in life. It’s easy to make a goal for the sake of having a goal, but if your heart’s not in it, you probably won’t get very far.

Discovering what it is you really want to do with your life is in itself one of the most difficult and important things you could ever do. But once you finally find something that you really, really want to do, nothing will be able to stop you.

After figuring out what you really want, working on improving your health or other self-improvement goals will come much more naturally to you. There’s no way that becoming a healthier person won’t aid you in reaching your other goals in life.

5. You Should ALWAYS Be Improving

As mentioned, waiting until a certain time of the year to start working on goals and then setting unrealistic expectations for yourself will often result in failure. The truth is, you should always be working on improving yourself. You should always be trying to eat healthier, obtaining more knowledge, getting more fit or just getting closer to what it is you really want to do in life.

Things don’t always go smoothly, of course, and hitting plateaus is natural and inevitable. But if you adapt your mindset to one in which you’re constantly looking to learn and improve different aspects of your life, you’ll simply find no need for New Year’s Resolutions anymore. Whatever month or year is displayed on the calendar really doesn’t matter. Always work on moving forward, no matter how gradually.

Instead of Making a New Year’s Resolution, Try This:

Keeping a diary is an excellent habit to start as you begin to take your health and overall self-improvement seriously. Want to improve your nutrition and eating habits? Each day, mark down everything that you ate or drank. If your goal is to exercise more and eventually get in better shape, write down the details of your exercise routines, or lack thereof, every day. The same applies to anything else you’re trying to improve, increase or change.

Write everything down as simple observations without labelling any of it as “good” or “bad” in your mind. Furthermore, be completely honest with yourself. Nobody else has to look at this diary but you.

There are several important purposes of keeping such a diary. First of all, it becomes much easier to make significant improvements in your life by simply making honest observations.

Previously, I wrote about how the best way to get into the habit of breathing more deeply is to simply observe your breath. Even without making a conscious effort, you’ll notice that your breath becomes deeper on its own by just observing it. This is also the desired effect of keeping a diary, but over a much longer period of time. By taking time to observe your daily habits, correcting the bad habits and making more time for the good ones will come much more naturally to you. By keeping a diary, you have no choice but to be brutally honest with yourself – one of the most important aspects of self-improvement.

As you gradually change and improve your daily habits, keeping a diary will also help you see all the progress you’ve made. As you look back at your previous entries and see your diet getting cleaner and healthier, you’ll feel proud of how far you’ve come. This will only encourage you to make more positive changes in other areas of your life, regardless of what time of year it is.

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2018 (and beyond) full of positive improvements!

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