F*ck New Year's Resolutions
photography + creative direction // Kiah McBride
I’m tired of New Year’s Resolutions.
There’s something about them that insinuates a bit of laziness. It’s spoken words and written reminders without thought of how they’re going to get accomplished. They sound nice when you say them, but then when the end of the year rolls around, the results are unforeseen. A resolution isn’t a solution for passivity.
Nor is it a panacea to the problems of which the roots have yet to be defined. The things that you want to change require more than a flittering thought that you post up on social media. It’s more than “new year, new me,” it’s learning the answer to the question, what about your current self allows you to continuously fall into patterns of failure? If you’re still saying the same “resolutions” as years prior, then that’s evidence that you’re insane—repeating the same cycles yet expecting different results.
The key to success isn’t what
you say you’re going to do.
It’s the actions and habits that you change in order to actually achieve your goals.
Case and point, I said last year that I was going to be debt-free. Great. Beautiful goal. It’s something that’s been on my mind religiously, especially when less than two years prior I pulled up in LA with less than $1,500 left to clear my name off the creditors list. Yet, the entire year I continued to dig myself into a deeper hole. And I couldn’t understand why. I had the desire to accomplish the dream; that was the whole point of the resolution, right? To speak it into existence?
Nah, fuck that. I needed a plan. I needed to get to the root of why I was running in circles, and why, even when I almost made it, I instead found myself going backwards. I did the work instead of talking about it. I identified the roots of my financial dysfunction as having a disillusionment that I deserved the lifestyle that I wanted. I focused on the here and now, not wanting to miss out on opportunities or purchasing comfort with the thought that it would be beneficial to me in the long run. In short, I was privileged and being straight up bourgeois—Champagne tastes on a Kool-Aid budget.
Identifying the roots and getting real with myself allowed me to fix the mentality that was holding me back year after year, and slowly I started making the changes that would ultimately lead to me accomplishing my goal. I left my dope ass one-bedroom guest home and moved in with six strangers. I picked up extra catering shifts while still juggling my freelance assignments. I let it be known to my group of peers that if it wasn’t free, they wouldn’t see me. I started to become a woman, not a little girl who threw temper tantrums at the fact that I couldn’t have it my way.
And you know what, abundance started to follow me. Even in the midst of unemployment, I’ve managed to secure the bag at a bigger and better job. It wouldn’t have come if I were still spitting resolutions instead of implementing lifestyle changes.
So that “new year, new me” shit? That’s for the birds. Those of us who are actually accomplishing our goals are too busy doing the work instead of reciting catchy phrases.
