When December rolls around, New Year’s resolutions are supposed to be a healthy tradition in which you recognize a new, refreshing beginning to improve yourself and any habits you may not want to carry along with you into the future. Wanting a fresh start with the coming of the new year is perfectly reasonable. In fact, it’s highly recommended to expel any bad habits, to reach new goals, etc. during this fresh new beginning. However, what determines how realistic and unrealistic these resolutions are? More importantly, how healthy are these expectations that we set for ourselves for the New Year?
Like anything created with good intentions, these resolutions can easily be corrupted and twisted into something actually severely detrimental to our mental health- and for this, we can mainly thank the presence of social media that has had an ever growing presence in society with the coming years. In regards to self improvement and resolutions, social media can be used for good to help us retain our goals and good habits whilst providing experiences for us to relate to, and positive affirmations. Nonetheless, the corruption that this causes us is primarily based on our perspective.
According to Global WebIndex, 60% of the world’s population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 24 minutes. Thus, our daily exposure to apps like instagram, snapchat, pinterest, etc. are only growing and affecting us more every passing year .Online, influencers can share their experiences, tips and resolutions during this holiday season with the seemingly good intention to encourage and influence others to do the same. The impact of influencer culture on our mental health really depends on the perspective of the viewer. In the context of resolutions, one may see an influencer balancing a glamorous, exciting lifestyle, along with healthy, admirable habits that they wish to keep going throughout the new years. This easily causes many to feel insecure about their habits, longevity of their resolutions, and essentially why they couldn’t achieve this superfluous lifestyle that was made to look so easy and seamless. This immense flow of insecurity causes an individual to set extremely unrealistic expectations for themselves to somehow achieve this lifestyle, which can be largely damaging to their mental and physical health.
However, not all resolutions need to be extremely unrealistic and unhealthy. It’s important to consider these goals may arrive one step at a time. When formulating these resolutions, be sure to focus on what’s right. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want to achieve? What are you grateful for? Whilst doing this, remember how every day is a new opportunity to change your life for the better. Remember how important it is to see how far you’ve come. Reflect over the progress you;ve made over the past year. Take this success, and motivate you to achieve even more next year, and remember how worthy and capable you are of achieving these goals. Remember that it’s okay to make mistakes. You aren’t expected to be completely consistent with your goals, even while setting a standard for yourself isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Expectations can be taken out of hand quickly, so it’s vital to your own health that you recognize it’s okay to slip up from time to time.
Overall, due to high social media standards and the controlled feed that you may scroll through on a day to day basis, new year’s resolutions can easily be taken out of hand, and it’s important to control them. Influencing, social media, etc. isn’t made to be harmful- however, the control that it has over what you see and think about yourself, and the severity of such, should be highly considered when creating resolutions for next year.
