The history and art of keeping New Year's resolutions

With the beginning of the new year come the usual goals most people intend to achieve – eat healthier, work out more, keep a good work-life balance, read more, and so forth. However, achieving those is not as straight-forward as one may think. First of all, let's dive into the historical tradition of setting intentions.

Although New Year’s resolutions seem like a rather new invention, intention-setting has been prevalent since 2000 B.C., when Babylonians celebrated their New Year, tied to the beginning of barley crop sowing, with a 12-day festival called “Akitu”.

They did not set specific goals to achieve, yet the festival marked the beginning of the farming season, during which they promised to return any equipment they had borrowed and to pay their debts. Later on, the Romans adopted the Babylonian New Year, but the day was eventually changed to 1 January as the start of every new year.

The Romans made promises to the god of January, Janus, every new year. Even in medieval times, knights took a vow called a “peacock vow” after the Christmas season, to renew their commitment to chivalry. In Christianity, it is common to pray and make resolutions for the year ahead during a late-night service on New Year’s Eve.

Furthermore, other religions have adopted similar traditions: in Judaism's celebration of New Year, Rosh Hashanah, through the High Holy Days until Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), believers are encouraged to reflect upon their mistakes of the past year. They should both receive and offer forgiveness to others. In most religions, the aim is to focus on self-improvement, which is still a prominent theme today.

Ever since the beginning of the 19th century, magazines have ridiculed those who made New Year’s resolutions and subsequently failed to adhere to them.

Statistics have shown that at the end of the Great Depression, only about a quarter of American adults pledged to keep their New Year's resolutions. In the beginning of the 21st century, the number has risen to about 40%.

Apparently, according to a study, 46% of people who have made resolutions such as lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, have also succeeded in keeping them. People who have attempted to reach these goals at any other time of the year have not shown such a high success rate.

Whether you have already set your intentions, or are still curating them, here are few tips which might help achieving them:

• People tend to fail at accomplishing their goals precisely because they were formulated too vaguely. For instance, instead of stating that you want to exercise more, you could set out to work out two to three times a week, or set aside specific weekdays where you would go to the gym or a workout class.
  
  
• It can be overwhelming to try and achieve an endless list of goals – you should stick to what is most important for your personal development and your health.
  
  
• Find someone who can keep you accountable, because then you actually feel like you need to commit instead of making excuses for not doing what you should have done.
  
  
• Prepare yourself by researching ways to lose weight, to quit smoking, or to write a book, whatever your goal may be, before January 1st, so that you can immediately start implementing measures into your life.
  
  
• Appreciate growth – just as preparing yourself is crucial, having faith in small daily steps changes your focus from having to be perfect to slowly progressing.
  
  
• Celebrate these small steps as individual wins – you deserve to reward yourself, but not by falling back into old patterns. 

It can take a few weeks up to a few months for an action that is repeated daily to become a habit. Once you have passed that point, you will most likely stick to your resolutions even after the month of January has passed, so they can actually become beneficial to your life.

And remember – you are not a “failure” if you do not achieve all of them, or even any! Life gets in the way sometimes, and that is absolutely fine.