How are you welcoming the New Year?

New Year’s Resolution, a concept we remember and contemplate in the few days leading up to the start of each and every new year. Its roots in the recorded history of humanity could be traced thousands of years back to the ancient Babylonians who promised their Gods to repay their debts and return borrowed items – failure to do so resulted in punishment. The month January refers to the Ancient Roman God “Janus”, the God of beginnings and transitions. Romans made vows to live better lives as the year turned.

That concept has existed for centuries, gradually evolving from a sense of moral duty and discipline into a personal commitment toward productivity, fulfillment, and becoming better in everyday life.

At the end of the day, New Year’s Resolution is another way to set goals for the new year. We have been setting goals for ourselves and had others set goals for us since we were literally infants. Have they always worked? I’d say occasionally.

Think about your New Year’s Resolutions for the past few years and how much was achieved. Think about what you wanted and didn’t fulfill – while also thinking about what went right. There could be something in common that made your goals have different outcomes.

Authors and thinkers have been debating that the currently traditional concept of New Year’s Resolution is weak because it relies on intention without structure. Back when it started, they were binding vows and were identity-defining. They had definition and proposed means. That’s why almost every modern voice either reframes or rejects the current classical resolutions we use.

Tim Robbins, the author of Awaken the Giant Within and Unlimited Power, doesn’t hate the thought of resolutions – but he’s against weak ones. He’d rather see us replace them with personal laws that stem from identity-based changes that have a set number of non-negotiables to abide by in our lives.

Jordan Peterson, the famous public speaker and author of 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, pushes for reframing resolutions as ethical obligations instead of motivational games. For him, it should be about refining moral responsibility, meaning, discipline, and personal structure.

Tim Ferris, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek and Tribe of Mentors, wants you to think of the past by the beginning of the new year - instead of the future. He believes doing yearly reviews, where you reflect on everything that happened and how you acted on it, is a more effective way to have a fresh start in your new year. A start where you hopefully mitigate the issues you faced before and focus on the strength points instead.

And lastly, we have the one and only James Clear, the author of the world-renowned book Atomic Habits. If there’s a million haters of the thought of New Year’s Resolution, he’s one of them. If it has only one hater, that’d probably be him. He outright rejects everything that’s related to this concept and argues instead in favor of systems, habits, and identity. He has his famous line where he says:

“You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

You don’t have to wait for the new year to start becoming a better person or start chasing something different in life. Start now!

These authors all had a point in criticizing it. Why don’t we all reflect on the past before thinking about the future? Why don’t we replace goals with personal laws, a standard code of ethics and discipline that, if we adhere to and live by, have the potential to propel us forward not only through the upcoming year of 2026, but way past it towards the unforeseeable future?

Food for thought.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t refute that having a classical standard New Year’s Resolution is still a fun thing to do. Your aspirations and dreams are a part of who you are. Your continuous improvement is a show of what you are capable of. Your wish alone to be better still counts toward the betterment of yourself and the company you have around you.

My wish for you, dear reader, is to never stop aspiring to become a better version of yourself. I hope your consistency and perseverance in life will get you to beyond the finish line you set for yourself.
And we sure hope the resolution in whichever shape or form you’ve chosen to give it, will be fulfilled.
Happy New Year!