2020 is coming to an end. For some, the end of the year is cause for celebration. People flood their timelines with their achievements for the year and their hopes for the next. A new start for a new year. It’s the time where most of us make resolutions for the coming year. This time of year can be rough for a lot of us. After the stress of the holidays, you may find yourself surrounded by others’ achievements and feel as if you can’t compare. This year was especially hard because of the pandemic, and many feel as if it was a year wasted or nothing to celebrate. You might also find yourself exhausted at the thought of New Year’s Resolutions, as they are often joked about never being kept. It’s important to consider how resolutions and celebration may affect your mental health this New Year’s.
One thing you might want to consider is how you’ve felt this past year. Mental health has taken a big hit for most of us this year. With the pandemic, every aspect of our lives has been altered, which takes a huge toll on us. During quarantine, people tended to post their best days, when they learned or tried something new, which can make it seem like our months stuck inside were wasted if we didn’t do those things too. It’s necessary to remember that just surviving through this year is more than enough of an accomplishment to be proud of. Anything past surviving is great, but don’t feel bad if it looks like others achieved more. People don’t show their worst days, only their best.
Another thing to take into consideration is making and keeping resolutions. It’s a running theme in society that most people don’t keep their New Year’s resolutions and often make the same one every year regardless. You’ll see a lot of people post these big and usually unrealistic resolutions, and making these resolutions can often lead to anxiety when you can’t follow through. It’s beneficial to consider making smaller resolutions month by month. It can also help to start over a resolution or make a new one part of the way through the year if the one you made for New Year’s causes too much stress or if you don’t have the mental capacity to do it starting in January. Resolutions aren’t bound to New Year’s, and failing at one can just be part of the process to figuring out what works for you.
While ringing in the New Year, celebrate making it through another year alive, especially this year. Celebrate any small accomplishment because you deserve to feel good about what may seem like the tiniest win. Personally, I’ll be celebrating drinking more water than I used to because even that was hard to keep to. Don’t feel pressured to make or keep any resolutions for the next year. Your number one goal should be to do whatever helps your mental health the most. Whether that means making small goals to try to accomplish, making no resolutions at all, or making big ones that might not workout as well as you hoped. You’ve made it through 2020, and that is enough.
Written by Megan Allison