I’d like to take the idea of New Year’s Resolutions to task. Or, more specifically, I’d like to take what New Year’s Resolutions can do to our commitment to making change to task.

Every year, on December 31st, swaths of people resolve to start making significant positive changes to their lives starting on January 1st. Form new habits, ditch old habits, get in shape, manage time better, eat better, etc. These ideas and positive changes, however, aren’t new concepts, or changes that only just occurred to these people on the last night of the year. They are ideas that have been swimming around in people’s heads for weeks, months, maybe even years. They are changes that have been considered and needed for some time. And yet, people let themselves hit the metaphorical “snooze” button on these changes over and over because it’s not the new year yet, and so it's permissible and comfortable to continue to put it off.

Just like hitting the snooze button when your alarm goes off only really manages to take away from quality sleep time and make you rushed and late, putting off making change until January 1st because that’s when New Year’s Resolutions are supposed to start only serves to set you further back from your successes. I fully understand the symbology of a new year and a fresh start, and undeniably the new year can serve as a healthy impetus to make change, but resting on your upcoming New Year’s Resolution in the final weeks of the year is nothing but a self-created illusion of comfort and accomplishment to feed your mind when you haven’t actually done anything yet. It’s the same as seeing yourself as a productive early-riser when you set your alarm for 5:30am, shielding yourself from the fact that you snooze yourself all the way up to 6:15am every morning.

“I’ll start tomorrow” is perhaps the least productive form of enacting change. You don’t need the calendar date to have the number “1” in it to work towards applying a solution to a problem, and resting your resolve to make change on an arbitrary tradition can trivialize the matter.

Have a resolution? Start it now. Perhaps the day is January 1st, perhaps the day is December 31st, perhaps it’s the middle of August. Certainly don’t let me dissuade you from making a New Year’s resolution -- it can be a fantastic step towards a better you. But let’s all agree to stop hitting “snooze” on who we want to be.

- PS

1/2/18

• Weighted ring dips - 5,5,5

Then...

• 12 min AMRAP

• 50’ DB front rack walking lunge (50/35)

• 10 ring dips

• 10 burpees