How to Not Fail Miserably at Your New Year’s Resolution

Look, I know this is a bummer, but you’ll probably fail miserably at your New Year’s Resolution.

After all, to suck at changing our lives is, in many ways, built into us as humans.  Think about it.

• We are naturally attracted to familiarity because we’re better at working with things we already know, and being better at things helps us to not die.   This is ultimately why we don’t want to start a new business or start going to the gym.  It’s because on a monkey-brain level, we think, “Fuck, what if I suck at it and fail and therefore, I don’t know, my head falls off or something?”

•  We avoid hard work unless laziness will literally kill us, because throughout evolution, we had to save as much energy as possible so that we could beat the shit out of a boar that afternoon for dinner (or something like that).

•  And we like to deny the idea that we need to change anything about ourselves, because that might mean that *gasp* we kind of suck right now.  And again, if we suck, we might die, or worse–find that no one wants to see our dicks, or buy us a house.

So yes, as you naturally are, you’re going to be terrible at and hesitant about getting into shape, starting your new business, or finding someone who can stand to be around you for more than four seconds (or whatever your resolution is).

But here’s the good news: Along with all of that, we also are (relatively speaking) superheroes when we go beyond our monkey brains, focus in on something, and don’t just wander around like daydreaming dipshits.

So we can accomplish our resolutions, but how?  How do we commit to a New Year’s resolution, and actually not suck at it?  It might be pretty simple.

Don’t get me wrong.  It is more complicated than our current method for resolutions, which is usually deciding, “I want to be less fat,” then impulse-buying a yoga class membership, and within two weeks of your purchase, mostly practicing the “horizontal Twitter scroll” position.

But it is pretty simple.  Here is how I think we can suck less at resolutions.

Most New Year’s Resolutions are about being more fuckable and dying later–generally things like quitting smoking or losing weight.

These are both perfectly valid ways to look to better yourself, and if they’re yours, then go for it.  But I think it might worth digging deeper as well.  What about your everyday life could you be doing better?  What have you been putting off for years?  How else do you suck?

There are for sure several awful things about you that could be improved, and I promise you that if you don’t know what they are, everyone you know fucking HATES being around you.

So let’s fix that.  Let’s look deeper.  Let’s explore the wider, more spectacular variety of ways in which you might be awful beyond the typical stuff.  Let’s consider things like:

-Maybe you constantly take from every friendship, and never give.
-Maybe you always are waiting to talk to people instead of listening.
-Maybe you habitually have midnight snacks of like 6 Pop-tarts.
-Maybe you don’t call your parents enough.
-Maybe you spend most of your work day looking at pictures of bulldogs and nachos.

You won’t fix yourself by simply trying to cure your symptoms: (like: I eat too many cannolis).  You must instead focus on fixing the disease that causes the symptoms (like: I have poor impulse control and a hole in my soul that I try to fill with ricotta.)

So that’s worth investigating.  In other words, don’t just say your problem is that you’re an obnoxious prick.  Ask yourself why you’re such an obnoxious prick.  Why do you need to insert yourself into every conversation ever?  Is it because you feel unworthy of the world unless you’re at the center of it?  If so, how could you feel more worthy?

Why don’t you look more fuckable?  Why don’t you eat better?  Why don’t you work out?  Why can’t you take enough control of your behavior to improve this?  How can you dig yourself out of the hedonistic hellhole full of Doritos that you’ve created for yourself?

Why haven’t you started a business (coward)?  What is getting in your way (coward)?  What can you do differently to get this thing going (not be a coward)?

Identify what the shitty behaviors are that lead to shitty behaviors.  Get to the root of your sucktitude.  Fully realize yourself–all of your warts, pimples, and tendencies to start sentences with “Actually…”

Then move on to the next step.

The truth is you have no idea what method of improvement will work for you.  Some people stop smoking by meditating, some do it by overeating instead, and some do it by cry-screaming at the cigarettes until their throat is so sore that a cigarette sounds terrible.  Each has their own way.

Finding what works for you will almost certainly come down to trial and error. You may try to be more socially competent by finding common interests with people, and then when you find nobody else in real life is as into My Little Pony erotica as you, you may find that becoming a better listener is probably a better path to social competence.

With whatever method you decide on for your resolution, here’s something important: make sure you fail a whole bunch of times before you give up and try something else.  Try a method enough until you’re sure that the methodis the problem.  Bring up Rainbow Dash’s sexy tail to several people, and get several disturbed stares before you conclude, “Okay, let’s try something else.”

And for the love of God, please actually do try something else.  Don’t cower from failure.  You are going to fail fucking miserably at this a billion times before you get it right.  Know that going in, and emotionally prepare yourself to get caught with mouthful of popcorn 2 days into your attempt to lose weight, or a handful of your own dick 2 hours into your resolution to stop masturbating.

You’ll fuck up.  It’s happening.  Stay resolute.  Keep trying shit.

There is a way for you to improve at almost anything.  You just have to find it.  Keep trying new ways until you find something that can get you better results.

And then, with all of that said…

Now you might be telling me to go fuck myself right now.  I don’t blame you.  I tell myself that all the time.

After all, what else is the point of attempting resolutions if I’m not getting the exact results I’m expecting?

“I’m not eating fucking celery every day just to then still have this jiggly ass.  Fuck it.  Give me something made of sugar dough and cow tit juice.”

The problem with focusing on results is that they often rely on outside factors that you don’t control, and putting your emotional eggs in that basket is a good way to break a lot of eggs and hate yourself, and your stupid, disappointing, breakfasty life.

If, for instance, the result you’re hoping for is a promotion, or to see your abs again, or to Rogaine your hair back into existence, there is a very good chance you’ll end up being flabby, hairless, and depressed, instead of your current state of flabby, hairless, and at least kind of hopeful.

There’s a real danger to that.  When we become obsessed with results, we risk being discouraged to the point of giving up on the idea of bettering ourselves entirely because we’re not reaping the rewards of our hard work.

Or at least not the rewards we want.

And that is the key to remember.  You may not get exactly what you want out of all of your hard work.  But you will get something, and if you learn to appreciate the journey instead of the destination, you’ll get to some much better places.

You see, the actual benefit of working out isn’t in seeing your abs again, or leering at all of the fuckable hotties at the gym.  It’s not even in then having a valid excuse to eat 4 pints of ice cream afterwards.

The real benefits of going to the gym are in statistically living longer, feeling better, and most importantly, becoming mentally stronger by making yourself do something you don’t want to do.  This all happens regardless of what happens to your man titties.

This is the benefit of all attempted resolutions.  By taking challenges on now, we improve at challenges we need to take on later.

And so it’s stupid for us to think of them as not worth doing simply because we may not get the stack of cash we wanted, or because for some of us, our abs will always be a theoretical entity that we have faith must exist under our guts.

You may just always have jiggly gut disease, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to be more fit.

So instead of trying to envision the reward, try realizing that the reward is in the work.  The point of a resolution actually isn’t to live a better life by obtaining things that you tell yourself will make you happier.  You’re almost always wrong about most of that shit anyway.

The point is to create a better life by creating a better you.  And the attempt to become a better you always, on some level, works.

Even if you fail at quitting smoking, you get a little bit better at trying.  Even if you don’t build a deeper relationship with your dad, you at least built a better surface level one and got better at trying to connect with someone.  Even if you don’t see your abs, you should be more confident in yourself, and people generally want to fuck confidence way more than they want to fuck abs.

So don’t give up on the idea of resolutions.  Yes, you suck at them now, and you probably still will for a while.  But the more you try to not suck, the less you will.  And that’s what self-improvement is actually all about.