Ditch Your New Year's Resolutions ASAP

Meet New Year’s intentions: the much more authentic way to transform your life.

- By Katherine Hammer

We’ve all been there: You create your perfect list of New Year’s resolutions (Get straight A’s! Clean your room every day! Make lots of new friends! Find a passion!).

Those first few weeks, everything seems to be going great. You dive into a math extra-credit packet you srsly never knew existed, separate your socks from undies in your too-packed drawer, make small talk with the nice girl on your robotics team and buy a bracelet-beading kit.

Then, all of a sudden, it’s February and life is getting back to normal busy. Between your history project, flute practice and training for that 5K, how *exactly* is your room supposed to stay spotless? And don’t even get you started on finishing that 23-page packet, setting up weekly hangs for your squad or ever returning to that half-finished bracelet…

Sound like you? Not only is it super relatable not to “complete” your New Year’s resolutions, but experts also say our brains are hard-wired to fail at our lofty Jan. 1 goals.

Yep, you read that right. Those promises you make to yourself when the clock strikes midnight are pretty much doomed. “There is a lot of evidence that New Year’s resolutions don’t really work in the long run,” says therapist Lindsay Johnson. “Instead, set intentions for the new year. They can help you create long-lasting and meaningful change.”