We hear it every time the calendar flips:

"New Year, New Me! 2020 is my year!"

Shut the fuck up. It's not.

By tying your "transformation" to an arbitrary date, you've already lost.

Also, I don't view myself as free from this faulty mindset. I have fallen into the "When this thing happens, I will make a change" mentality.

So when I say, "Shut the fuck up," I'm also looking in the mirror. People put things off all the time, but for some reason, New Year's serves as a sexy way to rationalize flimsy goal-setting, even celebrate it:

I'm going to quit smoking on January 1st.

I'll hit the gym once New Year's rolls around.

I'll plan that trip to Italy first thing 2020!

All of the above is the same thing as:

I'm not going to start X until Y happens.

It seems like everyone buys into the New Year's resolution hype, which makes it easier to procrastinate together.

"Hey, he's going to make until January 1st to make a change, then I will too! Let's use that as an excuse to put off beneficial lifestyle changes for three months then not make the changes anyway!"

Here are some reasons why New Year's resolutions are bullshit:

January 1st means nothing.

I'm going to start/stop doing 'X' on January 1st is the same thing as saying I'm going to start/stop doing 'X' on April 29th.

New Year's represents one day out of 365; it just happens to be the first. The other 364 days have the same amount of hours and opportunities. It makes no sense to wait until the first day of the year to make a change that you can implement today.

Why not start your "resolution" now?

Are you that weak that you need the calendar to flip to a particular day before you level up your life?

Are you willing to waste weeks, even months, to change your behavior because of a societal standard?

Let's take smoking cigarettes, for example.

Flashback to June 2019.

You've decided that you're ready to give up ripping heaters. You love smoking the casual cig on your warm walks to work, so quitting over the summer is out.

Then, your birthday falls in October. Are you really not going to smoke a pack on your birthday?

Then the holidays roll around.

So much stress. Yeah, maybe I'll wait until New Year's, and that will be my resolution. New year, no more cigarettes.

Keep lying to yourself.