New Year’s Resolutions, a Dying Trend

New Year’s Eve is usually the time of the year when we promise ourselves we’ll be better by setting goals and deadlines to achieve them by. A new poll reveals eight out of ten Brits don’t even bother about them, considering the practice obsolete.

Whether it’s to kick a bad habit or lose weight, or be less selfish and good to others, New Year’s resolutions were a must until recently. Also a must was breaking them, it would seem.

A new poll cited by the Daily Mail reveals one of the top reason why people won’t play the resolutions game anymore is because they don’t believe in the strength of the commitment made on the night between years.

Most of them, though, simply believe resolutions (and the practice of making them) to be a “waste of time.” Others – fewer, this time – believe changes should be made throughout the year and not over a short period of time in January, and then revert back to the old (more or less) wicked ways.

The poll was commissioned by the multivitamin brand Centrum – and it reveals that the expected has happened: making resolutions is slowly becoming a thing of the past.

“We’ve all made New Year’s resolutions in the past and, if we’re honest, it’s rare that people see them through. The research shows that many people no longer bother with resolutions because they don’t think they will stick to them,” a spokesperson for Centrum tells the Mail.

Most of the time, people fail at seeing their resolutions through because the goals they set are absurd from the get-go. Thus, it becomes unnecessary to set them in the first place.

“This is because people make unrealistic goals like beginning extreme diets or committing to heavy exercise routines that they can’t maintain,” the rep explains.

The solution, as some respondents also pointed out, is to incorporate changes in our lifestyle and to make sure we work on them throughout the year.

“But by making clever changes to one’s lifestyle instead of aiming at dramatic goals people may find that they can stick to their resolutions in the long term,” the spokesperson adds.